


Things That Go Bump in the Night

by seapigeon, velleities



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky is a good uncle, Canon-Typical Violence, Captain America Steve Rogers/Modern Bucky Barnes, Description/Discussion of Stitches, Domesticity, Ex-army Bucky, Happy Ending, M/M, Minor POV Steve Rogers, Modern Bucky Barnes, POV Bucky Barnes, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Shrunkyclunks, Steve is Intrigued by Eerie Things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-21 02:01:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 38,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18135563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seapigeon/pseuds/seapigeon, https://archiveofourown.org/users/velleities/pseuds/velleities
Summary: Many an odd critter and item have ended up on the front porch of the property Bucky house-sits in the Middle Of Nowhere, but a bleeding blond man is a first. A short inspection reveals the man to be none other than Steve Rogers; ex-Captain America, vigilante, and a wanted fugitive. Steve’s stay of a few days of recovery is prolonged, under instructions for him to lie low until the Avengers can sort out the mess that has become the Sokovia Accords. Bucky is pretty sure that he’s committing an act of treason by providing Steve a place to stay. He is also pretty sure that lengthy interaction with Steve makes one prone to impending headaches and possibly ulcers. And he is certain that he is, very assuredly, in danger of falling in love with Steve.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [ Stucky AU Bang](https://stuckyaubang.tumblr.com), with art by [ seapigeon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seapigeon/pseuds/seapigeon/works).  
> Thank you SO so much for the collab and for creating this amazing, beautiful art! Thank you <3.  
> Art [ here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18132446/chapters/42871382) and embedded in the fic (chapters 1, 2 & 5).
> 
> Huge thanks to [ emptydistractions](https://archiveofourown.org/users/emptydistractions/pseuds/emptydistractions) for beta-reading, and to [ velvetjinx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/velvetjinx/pseuds/velvetjinx/works) for the last-minute “SAVE ME!” tweaks <3.

Many an odd thing has ended up on Bucky’s front porch, but a wounded man is a first.

Strictly speaking, it isn’t Bucky’s porch, or Bucky’s house. The beautifully rustic, wealthy house in The Middle of Nowhere, USA is, for all intents and purposes, a workplace. Bucky is the diligent house-sitter for his sister Becca’s acquaintances. It’s the perfect job, paying kernels, but offering free housing and compensation for unforeseen expenses. It’s the perfect opportunity to escape the world, escape the noise and hastiness; escape _people_. After seven years in the army, a deadly explosion, a prosthetic arm, long months of therapy and several jobs that he quit, _this_ is what brings Bucky peace of mind – a steady, pleasantly dull routine, a little quiet. Dense forest surrounds the two-story house and its massive yard, and it’s miles away from downtown. The townsfolk would probably think the house was empty, if Bucky didn’t drop in regularly for supplies. Some still _do_ think of it as empty. Teens have often ended up on the front porch at midnight, sharing a smoke before trekking on higher, up to the ruins of the abbey built God-knows-when.

Teens sharing a smoke is only the tip of the iceberg in the nightly goings-on at not-Bucky’s front porch. On many nights, Bucky sees animals sniffing around, from raccoons to cat-like creatures to once a being that occasionally stood on two hind legs. He sees so many orbs as to put any self-respecting ghost-hunter that sees them as spirits to shame. He’s seen insects that could be giant moths or downright alien, and he’s been left the occasional gift of dead prey, or random objects that people have wanted to discard. He never interferes in these nightly occurrences. He just watches things that go bump in the night unfold on the screen of the surveillance camera in the kitchen, half-lost in his soothing knots of macramé, in a nightly hobby ritual that usually goes on until the wee hours of dawn.

This being the norm, the sudden stirring on the camera screen catches Bucky’s attention, but doesn’t alarm him. His fingers tangled in white cords, he lifts his eyes off of the wannabe macramé afghan to the gray grainy image. He’s only mildly curious as to what he’ll see, but the man that slumps on the porch makes his heart lurch. Bucky blinks slowly, shoulders set straight, his breathing slowing down. Apart from tiny twitches, the man is otherwise still, curled around himself in an almost fetal crouch. Features obscured, his clothes look worse for wear and arguably discolored in patterns that awake in Bucky memories of blood and wounds. Bucky sets the cords on the table and settles them against his dowel, eyes still fixed on the screen and mind whirring. His instincts fight with logic – the man is in trouble, Bucky should help; the man is a stranger, Bucky could get into trouble himself. He sizes up the man’s shape. There’s good chance he’s bigger than Bucky, but given the man’s state, Bucky can overtake him. He might be armed, but so will Bucky, once he grabs the gun stashed in the living room armoire.

Bucky makes up his mind before he admits it to himself, his genuine – albeit shoved far back in the depths of his being – nurturing nature asserting ‘Fuck it’ and pushing him one hurried step after the other to the house entrance. Quick-fingered, Bucky opens the armoire, tucks his gun in the back of his waistband and unlocks the front door.

The whooshing of the door is inordinately loud in the dark silence, the two steps that Bucky takes to reach the man thunderous thuds. The man startles, head snapping to attention. Bucky registers blond hair and a scruffy jaw, before the man, flailing and failing to sit into an alert position, rolls backwards down the three stairs of the porch onto grass and hard cobblestone. He sways on his side like a pendulum, trying to push himself up, but collapses with a resigned groan. The man is no threat. He is essentially out of commission. His clothes are torn and scorched in places, and, indeed, dark red in spots that speak of potentially serious wounds.

Bucky rushes down the steps and falls on one knee, hands hovering over the man’s side. Up close, scratches on the man’s face become evident, his skin shining pale under the cold light of the moon. The blood that stains the man’s t-shirt and pants clearly pools around gunshots.

Bucky swallows, distantly wondering when his throat turned so dry. “Hey,” he says evenly.

The man’s eyelids flutter, but remain slitted.

“Hey, pal,” Bucky repeats, his voice loud to get the man’s attention.

The man fixes him with bleary blue eyes. Bucky sits still and tries to look unthreatening. He is successful, or so he thinks; the man seems to find something in him that relaxes him a little, the tightness of his muscles giving way to loose limbs and a grunt.

“Can I–” The man grimaces. He licks his lips and scowls when he tastes the blood crusted on them. “Can I…” he tries again, but trails off, his words giving way to silence, gaze confused as he mules over his request.

Bucky tucks wisps of long hair behind his ears. “Hey. You’re injured. You’re shot,” he clarifies as the man frowns almost petulantly at the grass. “I’m gonna call an ambulance–”

The man inhales so sharply that he chokes. “No, don’t.”

Bucky clicks his tongue, barely suppressing an impatient snort. “You need help, pal.”

“I’m fine,” the man asserts, the strain in his voice negating his statement. “Just need a little rest.” He shifts, as though getting comfortable to make his point.

Bucky bites his lower lip, unimpressed. He knows stoicism, knows bravery in the face of pain. He’s seen people endure much more than their wounds should allow, and injuries that have looked worse than what they were – which isn’t something he can safely surmise for this man, not without further inspection; although the man seems to believe himself healthy enough. Either way, Bucky’s been prepped, locked and loaded for hardships such as this for years. The situation, as random as it is, doesn’t quite faze him. “What happened to you?”

“I–” the man moves a little, resting his weight on his right arm and shoulder – “leapt off an exploding helicopter, jumped off a few roofs, hitched a ride on top of a van and then I booked it until I couldn’t run anymore,” he finishes, voice and face as unassuming as if he had been discussing what he had for breakfast.

  


It is quite possible that the blond wounded man is not exactly thinking straight. It is also quite possible that he is off his rocker. Bucky hums, a noncommittal sound that comes out impressively suave.

The man reads him easily, notes his nonchalance. “I’m Steve Rogers,” he says earnestly.

“Bucky Barnes,” Bucky replies, fleetingly wondering if the man expects them to shake hands. He clears his throat. The man’s gaze is placid. “Listen, names are good and all, but you’re bleeding out on the grass–”

“No, I’m–” So-called Steve shakes his head. “I’m Captain America. _Was_ Captain America.”

Bucky raises his eyebrows. It’s been a long while since he’s properly kept up with current affairs, even longer since he’s brushed up on his history books, but the title matches the name and jogs memories of footage that he didn’t care to watch in his nearly catatonic post-Army state. Avengers saving New York City; memes from school videos with Captain America in a ridiculous suit befitting kindergarteners; sepia-toned pictures in readings mandatory from fifth grade to twelfth. The man matches the image; a little older, a lot wearier, definitely scruffier, but still himself.

“Ah,” Bucky says in impressive eloquence.

“Yeah,” truly-called Steve asserts.

Steve Rogers, Captain America, is apparently currently bleeding out – or, according to the man himself, _resting_ – on not-Bucky’s cobblestone and grass, at not-Bucky’s house, in the Middle Of Nowhere, USA. Bucky half-thinks that if he doesn’t take any action for much longer, someone will tackle him for negligence of patriotic duties, maybe even for treason. Or maybe he’s _committing_ treason for considering helping Steve Rogers. He did say he _was_ Captain America – a pretty telling choice of grammar, even if Bucky lacks adequate intel to place it in its proper context.

Steve exhales a shuddering breath.

Bucky clicks his tongue and sets his hand on Steve’s forearm. “Let’s get you inside.”

~

Hand hovering by Steve’s elbow, Bucky pushes the front door closed with his foot. Steve waivers, his shoulders sagging, but he’s steady enough to stand on his own. Inside, illuminated by the warm lights, he looks something out of an eighties horror movie. Blood has seeped through his dirty clothes, in parts dried and in parts seemingly fresh. Red patches stain his chest, back, stomach and left calf. His face is filthy, his knuckles bruised. Pieces of grass stick in his hair. Everything on him screams of potential wound infections.

Bucky hurries to the armoire and pulls out blankets. He dumps them on the couch, layers of protection between the bleeding man and someone else’s property, tough to clean in the aftermath. Steve gets the picture and collapses on the mount of blankets, grimacing as the drop jostles his injuries. He hisses as he takes off his jacket; Bucky mirrors the sound as he sees the bloody rivulets down Steve’s arms.

Jacket slowly off his back, Steve flicks his eyes around the living room, unsure of where to set it. Bucky moves forward, reaching. Steve releases his grip and runs a tired hand through his disheveled hair.

“What do you need?” Bucky asks. _Aside from a doctor_ , he adds mentally. _A hospital. Possibly surgery._

“Water,” Steve says hoarsely. “A first aid kit. Mostly water.” He pulls his left leg close to his chest, wincing. He cuffs the jeans hem twice, but can’t get it up to where the injury appears to be. “Scissors,” he adds, clenching his jaw.

Bucky licks his lips. “Listen. You said no hospitals–”

Steve shoots him a sharp glare.

“No hospitals,” Bucky repeats, flesh and metal palm out and gaze irritated. “But can’t you call a doctor that you trust? You look like hell.”

A ghostly smile flickers on Steve’s face, there and gone in a second. “I’ve been here before. I’ll be out of your way in a couple hours.”

Bucky bites back his ‘No, you won’t.’ Arguing only delays the mending. Leaving Steve be, he drops the pretty much destroyed jacket on the bathroom floor and grabs the first aid kit that he’s compiled himself. He grabs towels and tissues, a jug of water and a glass and heads back to the living room.

Steve has been busy. The pant leg that required scissors is torn in half, by Steve’s own hands if the blood now adorning them is any indication. Bucky sets the first aid kit on the floor and quickly pours Steve some water. Steve gulps it down, smears of blood staining the glass. Bucky peers at Steve’s leg. It’s a bullet wound alright, but it appears superficial, presumably safe from doing real damage.

That one can wait. Bucky tugs at Steve’s t-shirt.

“Lift.”

Steve wipes off the glass against his jeans and sets it on the floor. He lifts the t-shirt, his moves none the gentler despite his wincing, and Bucky barely suppresses a wince of his own. Two bullet holes puncture his chest and his side, red wells of pooling blood circled by swollen haloes.

“Scoot,” Bucky instructs, glancing at Steve’s back for exit points.

“Bullets passed through,” Steve rasps, dunking a towel in the water jug. He reaches out to dab his leg but flinches, the doubling-up irritating his side wound. He bends his leg closer to his chest and pats it with the towel as best as he can reach.

From Bucky’s vantage point of view, Steve’s effort is patently mediocre. Bucky frowns. “Pal.”

Steve doesn’t hear him, or downright ignores him. He cleans the area around the exit wound as well, then props the towel on the jug and reaches for the first aid kit.

Bucky crosses his arms and watches, eyes narrowed, as Steve attempts to fix himself all on his lonesome, stoically swallowing down groans. He watches, just to see how far Steve will go until he realizes his attempts will soon turn futile when he’ll have to somehow treat his own back.

Steve does not think that far ahead, not yet. He opens up the first aid kit, takes out a needle and thread.

“You sure about the stitches?” Bucky asks levelly. “Might need to check for bullet fragments.”

“’M sure,” Steve murmurs, threading the needle. “’S already healing.”

“Doesn’t look like it,” Bucky remarks, though it’s a moot point; it may as well already be healing, for all Bucky knows about angles and weapons and times of shooting.

Steve straightens, inhaling deeply in what Bucky assumes to be a breather from the strain on his side. Then he bends forward, bringing his leg higher, fingers ready to stitch.

Clicking his tongue, Bucky grasps Steve’s forearm and crouches down on eye level. “Stop.” Steve looks too irritated to not respond, but too befuddled to verbally form a reply. It’s a deer in the headlights look that somehow suits him, softens his rugged appearance into a human being who is just too stubborn to notice that he is not quite that alone in this. “Your hands are dirty, put on gloves.”

Steve shakes his head. “I’ve _done_ this before–”

“Congrats, pal, so have I,” Bucky says, his grip on Steve’s arm not loosening. “Put on the gloves.”

“Even if I do get an infection, I’ll fight it off,” Steve bites out, trying to shake his arm out of Bucky’s hold.

Logically, Steve being _the_ super soldier, he could throw Bucky to the other side of the room, if not further. The thought doesn’t seem to cross Steve’s mind, and Bucky is not about to stand down when he knows he’s right. “Say you do the leg,” he says, not backing out from the stare-down. “Say you somehow do the side, the chest. What about your back?”

Steve’s eyebrows lower.

“You’ll just leave these ones open, or…”

“I might,” Steve says coolly. He jerks his arm out of Bucky’s grip, the jolt sending him swaying. He inhales audibly and rubs a hand over his eyes with a perceptible shiver.

Bucky crinkles his nose. “You cold?”

Steve focuses on his leg wound, providing no reply.

“Might be blood loss,” Bucky remarks patiently, though trying to maintain that patience is a battle that he is quickly losing. He’s beginning to suspect that prolonged interaction with Steve Rogers makes one prone to impending headaches and possibly ulcers. “I’m right here, man,” he says. “I know how to do this.”

“Can do it on my own,” Steve insists, tongue between his teeth as he pierces his skin.

“I know, pal. But you don’t have to,” Bucky replies.

Steve stops mid-stitch – _for God’s sake_ , Bucky cringes – to look at Bucky. He holds his gaze for a long moment, until his hand starts to shake a little. He clears his throat and resumes his stitching, albeit with a glassier gaze. “Maybe the ones I can’t reach.”

“Magnanimous,” Bucky says flatly.

That fleeting smile twitches at the edges of Steve’s lips and Bucky feels an odd sense of accomplishment. Steve manages to stitch the entry point on his leg, barely flinching as the needle goes in and out. He moves to the exit point, this time at least wincing as he tries to gain access.

Bucky rests his elbow on the couch, propping his chin on his palm. “Somebody after you?” he asks, his voice rough in the silence of Steve’s efforts.

“Lots,” Steve replies. His hand wavers; he renews his grip on his leg and the needle. Beads of sweat cluster on his forehead, his breathing slowly turning labored. The adrenaline must be wearing off, the blood loss and evident fatigue getting to him.

“No one’s coming here,” Bucky says, soft but reassuring, not quite knowing why he’s trying to reassure Steve unprompted. Maybe it’s the hard lines around his eyes, the brief smiles that Bucky doesn’t seem to catch, the gentleness of his presence. Either way, he brings out in him something intrinsically protective that Bucky shoves back in the deep trenches of his being and builds a solid wall around for good measure. He’s adamantly against indulging in sentimentality, much more when directed toward someone that is virtually a stranger.

Steve finishes off the last stitch and scrubs the dampness off his brow. “That a promise or a threat?”

Bucky raises his eyebrows, unimpressed. “A complaint.”

Steve nods to himself, seemingly amused. Threading the needle through a blanket, he grabs the wet towel and lifts his t-shirt. The wound on his left side is bleeding anew. Steve makes a dissatisfied hum, cleans up the wound and disinfects it. He takes the needle off the blanket and tries to put a new thread through the hole, but his shaking hands miss the target.

“Steve,” Bucky says flatly, watching him struggle for a few tries.

Steve huffs. “I–”

“Steve,” Bucky asserts, stretching his neck and slowly pulling on medical gloves. “Pal. Buddy.”

Steve rakes a frustrated hand through his hair, successfully getting watery blood on it. Reluctantly, he passes Bucky the needle.

Bucky tilts his head. “Back first.”

Steve miraculously complies and slides forward, taking off his t-shirt. For lack of better words and in full acknowledgement of the potential cliché quality of it, neon lights flash in Bucky’s mind spelling out _Chiseled_. Wounds aside, Steve’s skin is smooth, his muscles firm, a perfect specimen of top physique. Bucky is almost alarmed that the needle might bend under the firmness of him.

He gets the stitches done, of course. In the end, Steve is still human, even if superhumanly resilient. He still shivers when the cold towel comes in contact with his skin, shudders when Bucky touches still warm parts of him to reposition him just so. Bucky covers the stitches with clean bandages, pushes Steve down on his back, and sets to work on the wounds on his front. He is careful with his dabbing of the injuries, gentle in his stitching, but not so gentle that he would lull Steve to a doze. As such, he glances up with reasonable unease when Steve keeps his eyes closed for a good three minutes.

“Hey,” Bucky calls, securing a bandage over Steve’s chest wound. “Hey.” He taps softly on Steve’s stomach.

The effort Steve exerts to lift his eyelids seems akin to the effort that a novice climber employs to get to Mount Everest. Still, he accomplishes it, even if his eyes are so bloodshot that he might as well be reaching a vampiric state.

“If you get worse, I’m calling someone,” Bucky says, his firmness diminished by the softness of his expression.

Steve nods, or maybe his head just lolls aside unwittingly. He closes his eyes again and Bucky turns back to his work in quiet. Side wound taken care of, he sets clean gauze over Steve’s leg wound. Ditching the gloves, he bundles the used material in a towel and quickly chucks it in the bathroom. With fresh towels he cleans up smaller cuts on Steve’s hands and gently wipes the dirt off of his face. Steve shivers when the cloth touches his forehead, but doesn’t give any other signs of consciousness.

Bucky steps quickly upstairs, grabs yet another blanket from his own closet and returns to the living room. He slows down and allows himself a still second to take in the man on not-his couch; harder and somehow softer than the man seen as caricature, more solid than the idea he represents, patently tangible in his greater-than-life persona.

Or so Bucky surmises, from what he has been told about heroics, invincibility, headlines about volunteering and of scorned friends and lovers, informed by Becca, who’s taken it upon herself to keep Bucky up to date with the news. Maybe Bucky would have had a better clue if he had spent even a minute contemplating Captain America and the Avengers, but he hasn’t. He’d been too busy contemplating his own mortality, navigating his civilian life and trying to put himself back together. Ruminating on others’ lives wasn’t a priority when he couldn’t understand his own.

As it is, Captain America is just Steve, and Steve is in a bad state on Bucky’s not-couch. Bucky sets the blanket over him, and wonders who he can actually call if they do need medical help.

In the meantime, he tidies up the bathroom and washes all items that touched blood. He absently sets to cooking up soup, food being a high necessity if Steve’s story is to be taken at face value.

A couple hours later, Bucky kneels on one knee at Steve’s side with a bowl of hot soup at hand, a discount knight about to wake up a sleeping beauty. The sleeping beauty in question doesn’t rouse after the first ‘Hey,’ nor after the second. Bucky would seriously question the man’s vigilance skills, had a quick testing of his forehead not revealed a burning fever. At least the cooling touch does make Steve stir, if only a little. Bucky assists the awakening with gentle elbow nudges at Steve’s thigh.

“Hey,” he breathes when Steve unglues his eyes, his gaze bleary. Bucky isn’t quite sure if he knows where he is, or realizes what is happening – but then again Bucky isn’t and has never been a super soldier, so he might be projecting and exaggerating. “I brought you food.”

Steve scoots upwards, wincing and groaning at the pull on his wounds.

“You’re burning up,” Bucky says, pushing the bowl of soup in Steve’s hands. Steve cradles it on instinct, a spot of warmth in an otherwise probably icy present. “D’you take ibuprofen? Aspirin?” He nods encouragingly when Steve stares at him, half-thinking, half-uncomprehending; it’s hard to distinguish between halves when Bucky barely knows him. “Yeah?”

“No,” Steve rasps.

Bucky presses his lips in a tight line. “No?”

“Don’t work,” Steve musters, bringing a spoonful of soup to his mouth.

Bucky pats Steve’s knee once with some leftover sense of what it means to show sympathy, and quickly brings over more blankets from the master bedroom. He never intends for the house owners to find out about this, but if they do, he sincerely hopes they are Captain America admirers. He even entertains getting a precautionary autograph when this all ends, personalized for the dear absent house hosts Delilah and Oscar. By the time he comes downstairs, Steve has apparently drunk the soup straight from the bowl and to Bucky’s slight dismay is wiping his mouth on a blanket. Bucky bites down remarks about sloppiness and throws the new blankets over Steve. Within seconds, Steve’s out again, body twitching under the pile of warmth.

Bucky nibbles on the inside of his lip, fails to assess anything worth assessing and retires to the kitchen. He sits on the chair and stares blankly at the customary white orbs flying idly about on the camera screen. His hand reaches for his macramé out of habit. He twirls the cords between his fingers and wonders what the hell he managed to get himself into this time, knowing full well that he never would have done anything different. When the orbs die down, when his eyelids begin to feel a vague sense of heaviness, Bucky migrates to the living room with quiet footsteps. He curls up on the armchair and hopes for sleep, wary of leaving Steve too long out of his sight lest he gets worse.

Steve does get worse – or a different kind of bad – but at least he does so in late morning, giving Bucky the chance to rest for a few hours.

“Red’s all red. Must let Natasha know.”

Bucky stops midway through assisting Steve with drinking water through a straw, and stares at him, uncomprehending.

“The Accords won’t allow it,” Steve mumbles with closed eyes. Bucky prods the straw against Steve’s teeth, coaxing him into hydration. “They’re safe,” Steve declares, turning to his side.

“Are they safe?” he asks deliriously much later, eyes unfocused as Bucky helps him change into a clean t-shirt.

“I’m sure they are,” Bucky humors him, or wisely avoids an argument with a man so feverish that he can’t keep his head straight or enunciate words. He tugs the t-shirt down to Steve’s waist, relieved that it fits.

In a stroke of luck, Steve makes a bathroom visit. Bucky replaces the dirty blankets, pleased that no blood has made it to the couch. Even more pleasingly, Steve returns changed from his torn-up dirty pants to the sweatpants that Bucky had hastily shoved in his compliant hands beforehand.

Steve hovers by the couch and runs his fingers through his matted hair. “I have to leave,” he mumbles.

“Absolutely,” Bucky humors him again, nudging him toward the couch.

Steve drops on it heavily. “Natasha will know,” he slurs.

“Why wouldn’t she,” Bucky replies, throwing the blankets over Steve as he lies down.

“Right,” Steve agrees groggily.

He falls asleep. Bucky sets to doing house chores.

He has so many questions – who Natasha is, for once, who _they_ are, but for the rest of the day and night, Steve is half-incoherent and mostly asleep. True to his word, however, his scratches are already healed, so Bucky has high hopes for his bullet wounds after all.

He Googles Natasha, the Avengers, the Accords. There’s too many reports, too many opinions. The Natasha in question, the Black Widow, did sign the Accords, the same Accords that Captain Rogers aggressively rejected, so Bucky isn’t quite clear on whether Natasha knowing whatever Steve alluded to her knowing is desirable.

At least this night he’s used to Steve’s deep-breathing presence, and sleep comes about easier on the less than comfortable armchair.

~

“Guess who joined a drama group!” Becca’s voice comes vibrant and exuberant through Bucky’s laptop. Bucky suppresses a wince, hoping the sound doesn’t carry from the kitchen to the living room. Earbuds are out of the question, or Becca will know something unusual is going on. Bucky is pretty certain that informing his sister of the runaway in his not-house is not amongst the things he should be doing. It wouldn’t be doing anyone any favors.

Bucky narrows his eyes in exaggerated suspicion, pulling the hood of his hoodie up with a swift flourish. Blue pointy ears protrude off the top; the brown hoodie and the bright blue fur-like material on the inside make his face seem like the pit of a somewhat gone bad or slightly toxic blueberry.

But, _screw it._ The image makes his eight-year-old nephew, George, sat on Becca’s lap, laugh in delight, so Bucky cares little about aesthetics. It’s a gift from George – this, and an assortment of similar items – who at some point early in his life caught up on the fact that Bucky would do anything to see him happy, and thus made it his one mission to get Bucky the most ridiculous clothes in existence.

Bucky loves it.

“A _drama_ club?” Bucky intones theatrically. “You gonna be in a play?”

“Maybe,” George replies with a contemplative frown. He flicks his fringe out of his eyes, nearly decking Becca’s nose in the process. “For now, we’re only improvising. I improvised a dragon yesterday!” he says, brown eyes lighting up.

“He smacked headfirst into a wall,” Becca says dryly.

“It was a _dragon attack_ ,” George protests in earnest outrage. “It was an enemy!”

Becca hums. “Pardon me.”

“What have _you_ been up to?” George asks Bucky, his expression so adult that Bucky almost snorts.

“Tending to plants, feeding the turtles,” Bucky says vaguely, resting his elbows on the table.

“The turtles!” George exclaims with a little bounce. “Little John and Rog!”

“The very same,” Bucky affirms. He doesn’t actually feed the turtles per se, or know if they live full-time in the yard; but he tends to every plant in his vicinity, so essentially, it’s feeding by proxy.

George cranes his head to look at Becca. “Can I get a turtle?”

“Can you get to your homework?” Becca retorts.

George lets out a disgruntled moan, turning to Bucky with a flat look. “Gotta go.” He scrambles down Becca’s lap and dashes off. A door thud sounds loud and clear, leaving Bucky and Becca effectively private in their conversation.

Becca leans closer to the camera and smiles dotingly. “So what’s up?”

“Put up a few more pieces for sale,” Bucky replies. “Pair of curtains, a throw.”

“Yay you,” Becca says with a loose fist pump. “I should do a side business too. Or an actual business. We could do something together. What if I took up crocheting?”

“That’d make Auntie Clementine very happy, even posthumously,” Bucky remarks.

“Right,” Becca says, pouting. “There’s that. I could never pick it up.”

“Well, you _were_ eleven,” Bucky reminds her.

“I was eleven and she tried to teach me _five_ times,” Becca points out.

“So,” Bucky musters a casual tone, “any major news I should know about?”

“Nah,” Becca replies. “Nothing that you’d count as major. Which is probably a good thing,” she adds.

“I found this Avengers article thing last night,” Bucky says. “Some Accords were signed? Maybe that did good for the world, major-events-wise.”

“The Accords? That’s old news.” Becca frowns. “I told you about that. You didn’t consider it valid news at the time.”

Bucky might indeed have said that. He might have said something along the lines of ‘Unless it brings about some kind of action, it’s just a paper between high-powered people.’ He just might have missed the part where those people were from _117 countries_ , as his fresh research indicated. “Mmm,” he hums noncommittally, propping his head against his fist. His assumed nonchalant expression is Oscar-worthy, or so he humbly deems.

“Dunno, it just made the Avengers less… there,” Becca muses. “They sort of broke up.”

“Didn’t like the oversight?”

“Half of them signed, half of them didn’t, and that was seven months ago,” Becca replies. “The ones that didn’t sign were declared decommissioned, on penalty of arrest as vigilantes – practically by the rest of the Avengers, really, ‘cause who else is gonna capture the Scarlet Witch or Cap?”

Bucky shrugs. “Not me.”

“Last we know is, they did become vigilantes, and the Scarlet Witch and Hawkeye got arrested,” Becca says. “Ant-man got a deal for house arrest or something.”

“Cap?” Bucky asks.

“Made it out, as far as I know,” Becca replies. “With the Falcon.”

Bucky waves a dismissive hand. “Old news though. Whatever.”

“That’s not that old, that’s barely stale,” Becca remarks. “Two weeks ago or so? It was around the time I baked that triple-layered cake that collapsed? Which, by the way” – she leans in even closer, her eyes bright – “I’m gonna fucking try again, but _this_ time what I’m gonna do is…”

Twenty minutes of cake anatomy and idle chatter later, Bucky gets on with the day. He waters the pots of herbs on the window ledge above the sink, grunts praises at the lemongrass that grows stronger every day, and inhales the sharp scent of fresh basil and mint. He tidies up the dish rack, sets plates and glasses inside their cupboards, cleans up the fridge. His online shop achieves a new sale, a macramé throw in bold colors that he has quite the affinity for, and which he should be packaging soon. For now, he makes a strong cup of coffee – a _second_ cup of strong coffee – to fill in for his lack of proper sleep and heads to check with Steve.

In a miracle of wonders, Steve is awake and sitting up. He rubs his face groggily, hair sticking out in every way possible and in a couple of ways not entirely possible. Bucky shoves his hands inside the pockets of his hoodie and drops onto the armchair, as Steve slowly scrubs his eyes and reorients himself to the environment. Steve turns to Bucky evidently to speak, but stops mid-motion and stares at him – or rather, at the hood around Bucky’s head – in disbelief. He blinks, narrows his eyes suspiciously and blinks again. A frown deepens on his brow. It’s a cute picture, in a confused big Labrador way.

Bucky remains impassive, but puts Steve out of his small misery. “I’m really wearing that,” he says. “You’re not seeing things.”

Steve tries for words, but words seem to escape him, or he decides that his comment doesn’t really matter. He reaches for the water glass by the couch and sips a slow sip. “You against the Accords then?”

Bucky raises his eyebrows. His cynical gaze matches the cynical gesture, but he is tired.

Steve does not shy away from Bucky’s look. “Considering you haven’t turned me in–”

“I don’t like oversight of questionable origins, or any kind of orders that strip you of your own agency,” Bucky drawls. “And far as I know, _you_ personally,” he says pointedly, eyes softening to impart that he doesn’t actually dislike the guy, “have done more good than bad, or at least you try to, so.”

Steve nods, his jaw tight as he turns the glass around in his fingers. “I’m sorry,” he says after a small silence.

Bucky remains quiet, uncertain of what should have offended him. Steve seems to be the kind of guy who feels sorry a lot, possibly about everything.

“It must’ve been worse than I thought,” Steve says stiffly, clearly suffering at having to admit this notion. “I’ll be out of here in – in a couple days at most.”

“A couple days,” Bucky echoes.

“I heal fast,” Steve replies.

“You’ve been pretty much out of it on that damn couch,” Bucky says, part matter-of-fact, part wearier by the second. It’s an argument over a matter so obvious that no argument needs to actually happen. “Cut the dramatics and rest.”

Steve grimaces, but his shoulders relax, possibly assessing Bucky as an ally, not a hostile force that only stares and glares at him. “Bucky,” he asserts, tasting the name, seeming to test that he remembers right.

“Yes,” Bucky confirms. “Steve.”

Steve tilts his chin toward him. “What’s with the getup?”

“Gift from my nephew, and a damn good one,” Bucky almost growls.

“He here?” Steve asks.

“No, I live alone,” Bucky replies curtly. “’S not–” he shakes his head – “it’s not really _my_ house, I’m house-sitting. Why’re _you_ here?”

Steve lets out a hesitant sound and picks on the blanket still on his knees.

“You kept saying about the Accords,” Bucky presses. “The Sokovia Accords.”

“Yeah.” A shadow of defeat passes over Steve’s face as he gazes at the floor in misery. He catches himself in a split second and clears his throat, standing up taller, unremitting.

“Your teammates got arrested,” Bucky prods.

“They did.” Steve rakes a hand through his hair. “While saving – well, maybe not the _world_ ,” he says with a trace of a half-smile that inexplicably makes Bucky want to make him _truly_ smile, “but a good damn portion of the world’s future. Taken to the Raft,” he adds, lifting his gaze to Bucky’s own. Now that the sight of him sitting up and interacting becomes slowly familiar, Bucky notices and internally stutters at the intense blue of his eyes, the blaze that burns within them. “It’s…” Steve continues, oblivious to Bucky’s musings, not immune to Bucky’s resting murder face. “It’s a prison for enhanced individuals underneath the ocean.”

Bucky sobers up fast. “What?”

“I got them out,” Steve says dryly. “People came after us. “Our jet got shot down, we commandeered a helicopter. There were gunfights, a clash up in the air, I, uh…” He shrugs. “I jumped onto the one remaining helicopter to take it out, give the others a chance to escape. The helicopter exploded, I jumped down, took the pilot with me. He survived, incidentally.”

“Jumped down with a parachute?” Bucky asks blandly, though he knows the answer.

Indignation colors Steve’s cheeks. He quickly schools it into something more neutral under Bucky’s glare. “Just jumped. I had to run, or they’d catch me, and so I–” he shrugs again – “I ran until I couldn’t and needed a place to hide. I don’t think I realized someone would find me.”

“What, you thought if anyone was here, they’d be asleep?” Bucky asks.

“Probably,” Steve acquiesces. “Or wouldn’t notice me.”

“There’s a front camera,” Bucky remarks flatly.

“I wasn’t in the best state,” Steve replies with dignity, a touch of defensiveness in his voice.

Bucky nods. “Where are you going next?”

Steve exhales a heaving breath. “I don’t know.”

“How are you getting there?” Bucky asks.

“I don’t know.”

Bucky stares at Steve for a moment. “Okay,” he says, gently enough to catch even himself off guard. “Clearly you’re not going anywhere soon.”

“I had a burner phone,” Steve says.

“It’s trashed,” Bucky replies bluntly.

Steve huffs derisively. “Of course.”

“Of _fucking_ course, Steve, what did you _expect_?” Bucky snaps. The intensity in his tone makes Steve smile. At least Bucky did make him smile. _Fucking successful_. Bucky fumes.

“Does anyone know I’m here?”

“No,” Bucky murmurs.

“Keep it that way,” Steve says. “Your phone line isn’t secure, is it? Or so I assume.”

“I assume so as well,” Bucky concurs.

Steve does not trust assumptions though, doesn’t take things for granted. Giving himself a tour of the house, he openly – albeit with an apologetic grin – checks for bugs and similar devices. Bucky is hardly fazed, as habit and what some would call paranoia, but others – not _many_ others, but certainly _someone, somewhere_ , Steve for example – would call caution, still dictate that _he_ does this as well, any time he is somewhere unfamiliar. Bucky knows that nothing that shouldn’t be in the house is in it, but Steve has to verify it on his own. Steve gingerly bends over lamps and under tables, gets on his tiptoes to inspect higher nooks and crannies. The living room not being optimal for sleeping, Steve chooses the guest room opposite Bucky’s bedroom, equally cozy if a somewhat larger space.

Standing in front of his closet, Bucky sets folded clothes on Steve’s compliant arms. “These…” he mumbles. He picks out a couple sweatpants and pulls out pairs of socks. He sets them on top of Steve’s pile, now nearly up to Steve’s nostrils.

“No ear hoodie?” Steve teases.

“Not in your dreams, pal,” Bucky says, shooing him out. “See what else you need, I’m going downtown.” Food must be bought and macramé deliveries must be shipped. Bucky assesses Steve from head to toe. Maybe a few pairs of underwear should be purchased as well.

Bucky drives to town in not-his truck. The cool air blowing in through the open window is jarring, but brings Bucky a numbness that he welcomes. He studiously avoids pondering the man at not-his house, or the fact that Bucky is now a state enemy by association. His instinct screams that he is doing the right thing, even if his more logically-inclined brain cells protest against it. No matter how attuned Bucky is to his practicality and good sense, he’s learned to trust his heart more generously by now.

He returns at dusk, chores settled and with two bags overflowing with groceries. Steve is in the kitchen, sat at the head of the table, mindfully avoiding the cords of Bucky’s macramé to his right. The news is on on the TV, a newscaster wailing away about dangers and tragedies, and Bucky stifles a grimace. Steve catches Bucky’s eye and smiles in greeting. Bucky is more interested in the family radio, helpless in Steve’s hands as Steve guts it and rearranges its innards with screwdrivers, pliers and tape.

Bucky sets the bags on the counter. “I’d rather you were taking it easy.”

Steve’s half-smirk is too irreverent for a man in his state. “What, stay in bed?”

“God forbid,” Bucky says dryly, folding his arms as he leans against the counter. “What the hell are you doing with the poor people’s radio?”

Steve points a screwdriver at the TV. “Nothing on the news. I tried your laptop for intel, anything reporting what happened or what came next, but it was password-protected, so.” He turns his attention to the radio. “I’m tweaking this to send out codes through the old channels, in case anyone’s looking out. I _hope_ someone’s looking out,” he adds in a petulant mumble.

“Steve, these aren’t _my_ things, I work here,” Bucky grits out patiently.

Steve nods. “Sorry.”

Bucky doesn’t think he is sorry at all.

“So” – Steve gestures to the macramé before turning back to his tinkering – “what are these?”

“That’ll be an afghan,” Bucky replies, putting away the groceries. “’S called macramé, knotting strings together to make things. I sell those things. Online.”

“How did you learn to do it?” Steve asks.

Bucky shrugs. “I taught myself.”

Steve turns his gaze on Bucky, relaxed but piercing, searching. Bucky finds he prefers him tinkering.

“You sell your craft remotely, you work at an isolated estate,” Steve says smoothly. “You know how to tend to gunshots, you’re not afraid of helping strangers who drop by on your doorstep.” He pauses. “You make your bed military style, you’ve got what looks to be a very high-tech prosthetic–”

Bucky tucks his metal hand under his arm. Irked that he hides it, he drops it to his side with a huff. “I was in the army. Doesn’t take a stretch to figure it out.”

“Oh, I figured it out,” Steve says with a small smile. “Where?”

“Here and there,” Bucky says vaguely. He isn’t afraid to remember, but he isn’t happy discussing it; not again, not after the reports, the evaluations and the heart-to-hearts with an offensive amount of people. “Overseas.”

Steve nods. “How long?”

“Seven years,” Bucky says.

“Why did you get out?”

Usually that’s a loaded question begging for a loaded answer, but Steve is genuinely serene about it, his tone friendly. To him, it’s a simple question for a simple answer, with no complications to it, as though things just _are_ , facts in time and space that are easy to state.

“Got disillusioned,” Bucky manages. “Saw good people get killed, got desensitized, didn’t like who I had become. I challenged orders all the time, I got blown up.” He lifts his left shoulder. “Was shown mercy by foreign allies that gave me this, and I thought it was high time I got out.” In a nutshell. Complicated emotional states and debilitating nightmares aside; inordinate anger for months on end and an inability to be in any kind of position where someone else is in control aside; an irritatingly long time to adjust to all-things-civilian aside. Aside from the asides, this is his life.

Steve nods. “The isolation – is it happiness or hiding?”

A growl bubbles up in Bucky’s chest, but he’s held back by Steve’s earnest expression. Were it anyone else, Bucky would take it as a jab, a hint, derision, but Steve is honest in his question. Bucky falters, his reactive response bleeding into a sense of peace that perplexes him. “I’m not hiding,” he says hoarsely. “Won’t stay here forever. But it’s good for now.”

“Okay,” Steve replies gently. He taps his fingers on the table and averts his eyes, resuming his tinkering in silence.

Under the television’s droning, Bucky makes dinner, tuning out the horrific messes that are broadcast by humming song after song under his breath. By the time he sets the plates on the table, Steve has successfully started sending messages in code.

“I’ll do the dishes,” Steve says, tucking in to the food eagerly.

“Like hell you will,” Bucky replies, picking at his pasta. “I’m pretty sure we have to change your gauze though.”

“I –”

“ _Don’t_ say it,” Bucky groans, dropping his head in his palm.

“Heal fast,” Steve finishes, a smirk on his lips.

“Whatever you do,” Bucky says, “don’t get the damn things wet.”

Steve smiles widely. “You’re pushy.”

Bucky huffs at his plate. “You’re an idiot.”

Possibly due to Bucky’s eloquent retort – or at least Bucky would like to assume so – Steve does not, in fact, get the gauze wet when he later takes a shower. When he walks back into the kitchen, Bucky is leaning against the counter, waiting for the kettle to heat up water for tea. Steve’s hair is damp and dripping droplets on the floor. He smiles sheepishly at Bucky before Bucky even has time to frown properly, a mildly alarming sign that there’s already a certain kind of attunement to each other’s predictable reactions. Bucky scowls all the same, giving Steve vindication. His smile turns into a grin, embarrassed but still thoroughly irreverent. It wraps around Bucky’s heart like a vice made out of the softest roses; Bucky’s half-hearted irritation dies out quickly.

Bucky’s sweatpants hang low on Steve’s hips, his t-shirt fitting snugly around Steve’s biceps. Steve pulls on a newly purchased cardigan that’s a little too big, a little too chunky, bringing the correctly-sized clothing items currently allocated to his person down to zero. Catching sight of the teabags on the counter, he makes a sound of pleasure. He brushes past Bucky, reaching for a mug, and in that proximity Bucky stares at Steve’s scruff, now shorter and trimmer than its pre-shower state. He looks younger maybe, less harangued, more–

More _cuddly_. It’s domestic, the whole thing is, and no matter how comfortable this coexistence feels, Steve is still just a stranger. Bucky recoils, his body mirroring the forcible withdrawal of uncalled-for tender feelings.

“Fucking hell, Steve,” he mutters sourly, clinging to his curmudgeonly side, “we’ve got a hair dryer.”

Steve merely grins more broadly.

The room is warm, the TV set to low volume. Steve demonstrates that he takes his tea with copious amount of honey and a dash of milk, to the point that it is questionable if it can be considered tea at all. Bucky crinkles his nose at him in disapproval, seeing an excellent blend of vanilla and jasmine going to waste. Chin propped on his palm, Steve sends out his coded messages and Bucky strings his cords into tight knots.

“You stay up late,” Steve remarks.

“I do,” Bucky replies curtly; no need to divulge information about insomnia and putting off sleep to stave off unwelcome dreams. He looks back at his afghan, the strings dancing between his fingers in quick strokes.

“What the hell is that?”

Bucky looks up at Steve’s confusion. He’s staring at the camera screen, agape. The furry little critter on the grayscale image seems to stare back at him, eyes glittering like tiny gems.

“’S a raccoon,” Bucky says dismissively. “I never spot them during the day, I don’t know why. Don’t even know how they get in.”

“Currently, probably through the hole I made in your fence when I ripped it to get here,” Steve says abashedly.

Bucky’s eyes widen. “I thought you jumped.”

Steve shakes his head.

Bucky clicks his tongue. “I’ll have to fix that.” This poor place clearly doesn’t hold a dime against Steve.

“I’ll fix it,” Steve says hurriedly. “My hole.”

Bucky unashamedly arches his eyebrows.

Steve throws his head back, performing an exaggerated eye roll. “Wow. Okay. I’ll fix _the hole_ I made in _your fence_ ,” he enunciates.

Bucky arches his eyebrows higher. Steve is dejected for a second, caught in a cycle of innuendos, but Bucky puts him out of his misery with a small smile. “No, you won’t. You’re in hiding, remember?”

“People come up here?” Steve asks.

“Rarely,” Bucky concedes. “And usually at night at that, mostly kids looking for somewhere to hang out. But you can never know who’s watching.”

Steve nods. “And what’s this?” He points at the camera screen. A white luminescent orb flies about gently, sometimes approaching close, sometimes pulling back and bobbing forward with renewed vigor.

“Dust?” Bucky suggests.

“Dust,” Steve echoes dubiously. “It’s glowing.”

“It’s just – it’s orbs,” Bucky says. “Maybe ghosts?” At Steve’s flat look, he adds, “They say orbs are signs of ghostly presence.” He turns to his afghan. “What, you don’t believe in ghost stories, Stevie?”

“It’s hard to _not_ believe in things anymore,” Steve replies.

It’s true, but an odd sense of heaviness comes with it. Steve slouches back in his chair and stares intently at the radio, as though willing it to yield results. His lips, pinched, turn down at the edges. The weight of the world – or of a huge gray cloud – seems to hover above his head.

Bucky shifts on his chair. “Someone left a box of dolls once,” he attempts, steering the discussion to lighter subjects.

Steve lifts his eyes, bewildered.

Bucky shrugs. “On the front porch. I saw them do it. They were clean,” he adds begrudgingly. “No surveillance devices.”

“Always good to check,” Steve affirms.

Bucky rolls his eyes at Steve’s humoring him, but it’s half-hearted when the sentiment behind it is this kind. “Saw a massive flying thing once. Could’ve been an oversized moth, an alien, the mothman, I dunno. Things that go bump in the night are my friends.”

Steve smiles, his eyes warm and twinkling. “Lucky for me.”

“Lucky for you,” Bucky concedes.

~

The chain link fence surrounding the property looks as though a rhino has blindly stampeded through it. The rhino survived this, and is safely sipping on his morning coffee; the fence was not so lucky. Bucky fetches a spare fence railing, wire ties, a hacksaw and assorted tools, dons sturdy works gloves and curses his way through a long morning that guarantees him a few stray pricks and copious sweat.

Back in the kitchen, Steve fiddles with the radio, unruly hair betraying that he’s run his hand through it one too many times. The news is on again – it’s always on – and Bucky lowers the volume.

“You going to keep harassing that thing until someone catches up on your signal?”

“Yep,” Steve replies dismissively, tweaking the dials right, left and center. “Someone called you.” He cocks his head to Bucky’s laptop, now unlocked with full access to Steve and his news-hounding propensities. “Skype.”

Bucky doesn’t need to check to know who it is, but he checks anyway. As expected it’s Becca, the call followed by a message inviting him to a call with George. Bucky dashes upstairs, throws on a beanie with a unicorn horn sprouting stumpy, bold and proud on the top, and runs back to the kitchen. He grabs the laptop, makes shushing gestures at an adorably befuddled Steve and takes to the living room, already calling Becca.

Becca responds as soon as Bucky sets the laptop on the coffee table, her exuberant ‘Hellooooo!’ resounding in the room. George’s high-pitched ‘Hullo!’ makes Bucky smile. He plops down onto the armchair and leans toward the screen.

“Hey,” he drawls, as though he didn’t just sprint to get outfitted merely for the kid’s pleasure.

It pays off at least. George bounces on his seat, pointing eagerly at the camera.

“What?” Bucky narrows his eyes, faking confusion. His hand wanders on his head, fingers catching on the mushy horn. “Oh, _that_? Right, I’m still wearing that. I put it on this morning and then forgot.”

“Yesss,” George exclaims in a part-hiss and part-screech.

“Talk to me,” Bucky says.

A heartfelt rendition of a monologue from _Twelfth Night_ later – George being apparently a natural in acting – he proceeds to list and appreciate the backstage technical skills that he’s come to know. Bucky makes sure to act awed in all the right places, in his own understated way lest George doesn’t believe him.

“And there’s a boy that wants to be on the costume team,” George says, gesticulating excitedly, “and he’s got _ideas_.”

“Ideas!” Bucky echoes.

“Yes!” George almost shrieks. “Like, when we talked about _Twelfth Night_ , he had ideas for costumes and what we could do with stuff we had at home–”

“Which is how,” Becca interjects, “I found George rummaging in the attic for our old green curtains.”

Bucky snorts out a chuckle and grimaces dubiously at George. A flash of motion to the right makes him glance up. Steve leans against the doorframe, watching on with loosely folded arms and a quizzical half-smile on his lips. Bucky suppresses a smile of his own in the interest of keeping up appearances of still being alone in the house, and pats down his horn to distract himself. Steve’s eyes are still on him as George details the duties of a props master, and once again the domesticity of the situation is overwhelming. It warms the room up in a manner that nothing else does, a quite unnerving thought for Bucky who is used to living on his own. He shakes his head minutely and wiggles on the armchair, refusing to dwell on the sentiment. He misses half of George’s speech and only nods out of reflex, but by the call’s end, he’s settled back into comfortable self-sufficiency.

~

Said comfortable self-sufficiency turns out both a blessing and somewhat precarious as soon as a new day dawns. Bucky returns to the kitchen after dealing with the property’s plants to find Steve all but leaping up at him, his eyes bright and his grin excited.

“Whoa,” Bucky murmurs suspiciously.

Steve points at the radio. “Natasha heard. She’ll drop by soon.”

Bucky nods slowly, mind whirring to write out a course wherein Steve departs with his Avenger friend tonight, Bucky bids him goodbye with a smart snarl in his throat and a small knot in his heart, and then resumes his life. In the two seconds it takes for that predestined imaginary movie to play out, Bucky has already grounded himself in that new future and it’s come to sting only a little. He won’t allow himself to call this a loss, not really; doing so would be one hell of an exaggeration. It’s just a fun story that he’ll never get to tell a living soul. “Okay,” he says levelly. “Are your friends safe?”

Steve beams. “Yes.”

Bucky nods again, then gives Steve a quick thumbs-up for good measure. He takes to the counter and the cupboards, pulling out pots and pans for lunch.

“I’ll help out,” Steve says, trotting beside Bucky.

“Nope,” Bucky asserts, snatching vegetables out of the fridge.

“I’ll–”

“No.”

Steve leans against the counter and, inexplicably, he smiles. He shouldn’t be smiling, Bucky knows this – he does sound like somewhat of a jerk on occasion, and especially now, in his curt, somewhat defensive tone. Still, Steve smiles, and Bucky nudges him to the side with his elbow to reach the sink. Self-conscious and oddly flushed under Steve’s gaze, Bucky washes zucchini with a concentration normally reserved for intricate electronics engineering or astrophysics. He shakes the excess water off the vegetables and steps aside, putting safe space between himself and the warmth that Steve exudes.

“Turn down the volume,” Bucky says hoarsely, eyes on the zucchini that he cuts into pieces.

Steve grabs the remote control and sets the television on mute. “You’re not being nice,” he says, back to his spot against the counter.

Bucky glances up at the offhand remark. Sunlight floods into the kitchen through the windows, and falls generously on Steve’s skin and golden hair, lingering on his fine lines and his kind eyes as though greeting an old friend. He looks like a glowing martyr in an old painting that’s against all odds come alive in not-Bucky’s kitchen. Bucky swallows dryly and turns back to the zucchini. “What?”

“You’re not being nice,” Steve repeats, in the tone of someone who has just discovered new moons in the known universe. “You’re not being _hospitable_. You just don’t want me to help because you don’t want me messing with how you do things.”

“Yep,” Bucky concedes easily.

“You’re bossy,” Steve observes; Bucky can hear him grinning.

“What ever on earth gave it away,” Bucky mumbles flatly. “You can–” He flicks stray strands of hair off of his face in a jerky gesture, his cutting knife dangerously close to his cheek, a patently bad idea. “You can water these.” He motions to the herb pots on the window ledge.

“Oregano?” Steve asks.

“Mint, basil, lemongrass,” Bucky lists. “Only _one_ teaspoon of water!” he hisses the minute Steve touches a mug.

Steve chuckles. Steve is a moron. Rather, Bucky is a moron, or his backstabbing heart is, the way it flutters and discoes it up under the sound of Steve’s light laugh. He tunes it out – the sentiment, the water that Steve runs, and Steve in general – and chops up the rest of the zucchini and a couple carrots. He sets a pan on the stove, setting the vegetables to simmer on low heat. He stands guard above the pan, pretending to be wholeheartedly absorbed and busy; wholeheartedly indifferent to Steve’s gaze, once again on Bucky after the completion of his task.

At long last, Steve shuffles and straightens. Bucky lets out a quiet sigh, liberated from the gentle scrutiny. He glances backwards discreetly, curious to see what finally caught Steve’s interest more than the current proceedings–

He jumps back, heart leaping in his throat as he suppresses a yelp. The Black Widow – Natasha – struts into the kitchen noiselessly, her gait confident, her features smug at the reaction she elicits.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Bucky exclaims.

Steve smirks, solidifying his pain-in-the-ass status.

“How the fuck did you get in?!” Bucky almost screeches.

“I have my ways,” Natasha replies smoothly. She saunters to Steve’s side, her lips quirking in a crooked, tight smile. She briefly eyes him from head to toe, finding him sound enough to point her proverbial antennae toward Bucky. “Upstairs window.” She cocks her head. “James Buchanan Barnes,” she starts, her voice mild, her gaze sharp. “Born March 10th, eldest of two siblings, sister named Rebecca. Two years of community college, seven years in the army. Last known address was in Brooklyn, quit four jobs in the span of a year–”

“Natasha,” Steve interjects calmly, in good timing as Bucky grits his teeth and considers whether throwing a pan at an Avenger counts as an immediate death sentence. “This is Bucky.”

“Least you picked a good hideout,” Natasha says.

“Wasn’t much of a choice,” Bucky remarks dryly, building his self-control back up piece by small traitorous piece, sour comment by sour comment. “He bled all over the yard.”

Natasha presses her lips together in a line, part-remorseful, part-amused. She pats Steve’s arm consolingly.

Steve chuckles in response. “Sam?”

“Fine,” Natasha replies.

“Wanda, Clint?” At Natasha’s nod, Steve adds, “Tony?”

Natasha rolls her eyes. “You made a mess. Again. He isn’t happy. And on that note…” She squares her shoulders and minutely sets her feet apart, evidently predicting and preparing for a fight. “I need you to lay low.”

She has predicted correctly. Steve utters a strained sound and throws his head back, ready to protest.

“You’re worse off than before,” Natasha remarks before Steve verbalizes his indignation. “You broke into prison, broke out prisoners–”

“ _Rescued_ ,” Steve corrects.

“Destroyed federal property, assaulted government officials, _on top of everything else_ that they have on you already. On all of you,” Natasha snaps. “ _Listen_ to me,” she enunciates at Steve’s derisive huff. “Tony’s working on it.”

Steve backs off for a moment, considering Natasha’s words as he idly scratches his scruff. “On what?”

“On getting the Accords annulled, or dissolved,” Natasha replies. “Getting you exonerated. He’s working on it, but he wants to do it on peaceful terms. A lot of nations aren’t on our side, right?” Steve averts his gaze, impatient. Natasha gently tips his chin so that he faces her. “You _need_ to lay low for now. Every misfire makes things worse. Everyone’s safe, _right now_ ,” she stresses. “Don’t be the wildcard in this. Please.”

Steve holds her gaze, his eyes hard. For a long moment, neither of them speaks, neither backs down, until Steve cocks his head to the side, his shoulders sagging.

Apparently this is as much of an agreement as Natasha expects to get. She nods, quietly satisfied, and pulls a small cell phone out of the pocket of her jacket. She pushes it into Steve’s hands, wrapping his fingers over it. “I’ve a list of safe houses–”

“He can stay here,” Bucky blurts, stirring veggies and not even remotely pretending that he isn’t listening in. He turns to Steve, expression even and heart erratic. “You can stay here. If you want.”

Steve raises his eyebrows at Natasha, challenging her to argue. Natasha contemplates Bucky openly, a little wary.

“It’s a good hideout, you said so,” Bucky reminds her. “What could go wrong? Safe houses can be compromised, but no one’s really gonna look for Captain America here.”

“That’s fair,” Steve reinforces.

Natasha shoots Steve a sharp look. “May I speak to you in private?”

Steve murmurs his assent, leading her out of the kitchen with a hand on the small of her back. Bucky can only hear Steve’s footsteps as they move about, and shakes his head. The least someone who possesses such mastery of stealth can do is graciously make loud noises for the sake of the other people around.

Bucky sets plates on the table, flippantly two in number, ruing Natasha for her non-grand entrance, when she and Steve walk back into the kitchen. Steve’s amused faint smile is in stark contrast to Natasha’s hard gaze. She slides up to Bucky, lips quirking in a predatory smile as she twirls her finger around macramé cords. Bucky deliberates at setting down the cutlery in his hands, then sets his shoulders straight to face her on his own sweet time.

“If you try anything,” Natasha says, her voice low, “if you so much as hint to anyone about this, you’ll find yourself with a garrote around your throat and my knife slicing off bits and bobs of you until you cry for mercy. Which,” she adds, “I’m not going to show.”

Bucky returns her fervent gaze with indifference. Natasha is formidable in her mere presence, but her threats fall empty. He does not have any intention of committing any crime in the realm of her admonishments. He doesn’t have any skeletons to hide that would otherwise incriminate him or put him in Natasha’s black books. It’s hard to be intimidated when he is and plans to remain guiltless.

“Got it?” Natasha asks.

“I won’t try a thing,” Bucky replies mildly. “You staying for lunch?”

Natasha shoots him an unimpressed stare, then turns to Steve. “You do not leave this house,” she says tautly. “Don’t make me regret this.”

“He’s a punk. It’s rather out of your hands, isn’t it,” Bucky mutters, vaguely aware that he might be actively digging his own grave. Does one backchat the Black Widow and live to tell the tale? The public reports don’t delve into that part of her character, possibly because no one has tried it, or because they don’t dare speak it aloud.

Unexpectedly, Natasha hums approvingly and turns to Steve. “Making spot-on first impressions, are we?”

“I’m transparent like that,” Steve acquiesces. 

Natasha presses her lips in a rueful smile and leans in, planting a peck on Steve’s cheek. “Stay safe,” she says, with a small nod to herself as though her own affirmations will convince Steve to act likewise. With a squeeze to Steve’s bicep, she rounds in on Bucky.

“I know,” Bucky begins preemptively, before the torrential threats can begin.

Natasha narrows her eyes, sizing Bucky up, trying to read between the lines, searching for nefarious loopholes. She doesn’t trust him, nor should she; to her, Bucky is an unknown variable. The least she can do is remain cautious.

Bucky ignores the evaluation of his character and serves lunch.

Natasha departs through the upstairs window, making not a single sound as she goes. As though to recompense, Bucky makes as much noise as possible, scraper clattering against the pan, pan banging against the stove, knives thrown raucously into the sink.

Steve reaches for napkins and passes them to Bucky with a quirky smile. “Hey, roomie.”

Bucky pries a napkin out of Steve’s hand. “Screw you,” he fires back, far too fondly to deter Steve’s grin. He turns the TV to a soap opera and pretends to be worrisomely absorbed in it for the foreseeable future.

~

Bucky wakes up to Steve tinkering with yet another radio, previously stored in the sunroom, now a hapless victim in Steve’s hands. Warm coffee is available, and a mug waits for Bucky to fill it with black bliss, so that tampers down his grouchiness considerably; it might have even been premeditated.

“You _have_ to stop messing with the electronics, man,” Bucky says, cradling his coffee mug with both hands, heat and phantom heat seeping through skin and metal.

“I just want to keep an eye on local police radio,” Steve replies casually, tongue peeking out as he does God-knows-what to a cluster of wires.

“You what now,” Bucky says flatly. He clutches the mug tighter, clinging to the scent of coffee for his sanity.

“It won’t be on all the time,” Steve replies. “That _ccczthz_ sound, right? In between talking? It’s annoying, I know. I’ll just occasionally check in–”

“For _what_?” Bucky asks. “You’re not supposed to meddle.”

“No,” Steve says mildly; so mildly that Bucky’s every single hair rises on end at how unconvincing it is. “But it doesn’t hurt keeping informed.”

“How do you even know how to do this?” Bucky settles against the counter, crossing his ankles. “Tinkering with electronics? Next thing you know, you’ll be discovering new exoplanets or something.”

Steve smiles. It’s a nice smile; it’s an _innocent_ smile.

Bucky narrows his eyes. “Will you be discovering new exoplanets?”

“Natasha trained me,” Steve says, waving at the radio with pliers in hand. “You never know what kind of bind you might find yourself in. Case in point. Although she probably had something more tragic in mind.”

Bucky hums, his interest piqued. “You train each other for survival situations?”

“Please,” Steve says with a huff. “We’ve trained for a nuclear apocalypse, takeover by hostile aliens – though that one was a year too late. We’ve trained for mind control scenarios, magnified beings, shrunken enemies, zombie attacks, vampire attacks–”

“ _Vampire_ attacks?” Bucky frowns. “What d’you do in a vampire attack? Should that ever happen,” he adds uncertainly.

“Ideally? Suck on some garlic,” Steve replies.

Bucky stares at him for a long moment, then lowers his eyebrows. “You’re kidding.”

Steve’s face cracks in a small smile. “A little. Buck,” he says, sincere, “thank you for letting me stay.”

Bucky clicks his tongue, waving off the goodwill gesture and any other sentiment that might evoke out of him further emotionally charged responses. “Let’s see if we should cut off those stitches, yeah?” he deflects, suppressing a flinch at the unity of his ‘we’ choice. “Mr I-heal-fast.”

Steve smiles.

Damn him for that smile.

Bucky sighs; his heart sings.


	2. Chapter 2

Bucky curses under his breath and shoves stray hair off of his face with a huff. “Steve?” he shouts – or rather whines, his voice going up an octave.

Steve trots to the living room from his spot in the sunroom, his poor substitute to actually going out in the sun in the three weeks that he’s been staying with Bucky. The windowed walls are a liability that makes Bucky uneasy, but at least the room is at the back, setting the front of the house as a semi-adequate line of defense. Plus, Steve wears ballcaps and beanies to conceal his blond hair. Anyone not looking in too closely might simply assume they’re seeing Bucky.

Bucky readjusts the vacuum cleaner in his hand and nods toward the couch. Steve lifts it effortlessly, a dance they’ve performed numerous times for efficiency’s sake. Vacuuming and mopping become pretty fast when someone lifts furniture off of the floor instead of dragging it around oh-so-gently to save the floorboards from scratches. Bucky runs the vacuum cleaner, appreciating the patch of bare skin that Steve sports in his lift. Steve catches his eye and seems to needlessly flex a bit more, or maybe Bucky is hypervigilant and making things up in his head.

Bucky might be discreet in his handling of Steve’s bare parts, but Steve doesn’t afford him the same courtesy. Propped up on a step ladder, Bucky dusts the tall cabinets and closets of the upstairs rooms, stretching to reach the far corners. His sweatshirt hitches up his midriff, the brush of cold air making him shiver. Steve, on ‘hand-me-that-one-thing-or-the-other’ duty, grins and quickly ducks his face to hide it. That should have set off alarm bells in Bucky’s head, but he is too hung up in dusting to dwell on the significance of Steve’s gesture. As such, a cold hand slithers up his skin, calloused fingertips freezing and burning him at once. Bucky shudders and yelps, holding on to the cabinet and the step ladder for support.

“ _What the hell_?” he cries at Steve, who pinches Bucky’s side with a snigger. “I could’ve hit the floor, you jerk!”

“I would’ve caught you,” Steve retorts easily.

“I’d file a lawsuit as a victim of Captain America!” Bucky gripes.

“I’ve good lawyers,” Steve says placidly, then frowns. “I’m sure I do, or would, if I needed one. Surely Tony–”

“You’re _a fugitive_.”

Steve waves his hand dismissively.

Bucky returns to dusting, shooting a wary glare at Steve. “Don’t touch me again, or I swear to God.”

Steve does not touch Bucky again. Bucky spends the remainder of the chores reluctantly half-wishing that he would.

Dusting and vacuuming finished, the entire house is mopped and Bucky and Steve get stranded in the kitchen as the floors dry. Bucky plops on to a chair and pulls his laptop close. Steve fiddles with the radio, tuning in to the police frequencies as per usual, the voices of the individual officers by now familiar. The police officers on active field duty tend to hold inane conversations with the dispatchers, crime being low to nonexistent in the small town; today is no exception.

“ _Getting donuts_ ,” Police Officer Bob declares.

“ _You just have a crush on Lucy_ ,” Dispatch Control Jim says from the control station, his voice staticky and rough.

“ _I just have a crush on the donuts_.”

“ _Get the chocolate sprinkles ones_.”

“They’re getting donuts,” Steve remarks, leaning back in his chair.

“So I hear,” Bucky says, cheek propped on his fist, slowly melting against the table as he scrolls through e-mails.

“They make me hungry,” Steve says.

“You’re always hungry,” Bucky replies idly. “Oh hey.” He perks up. “Couple things got sold.”

Steve makes a fist that he extends to Bucky, face split with an easy smile. “Cheers.”

Bucky fistbumps him lightly. “US and Scotland.” He pulls on a new tab to check the recent headlines. A compromise has been mutually achieved, after a short fight: less news droning on the TV, more checking up the news online and deciding what’s worth examining. “Snow…” he mutters, reading. “Traffic issues, threats, Tony Stark is in Brussels… Zombie raccoons… You’re all set for that,” he tells Steve with a raised eyebrow.

“Next time you see a raccoon that looks reanimated, give me a shout,” Steve says dryly.

“Will do.” Bucky snorts out a laugh when Steve kicks him on the shin.

They could have been friends in another life – or maybe more, if Bucky allows his imagination to roam free, which he does, sometimes, on special occasions. They could’ve shared small moments in the world outside. Steve is restless often, toys with his burner phone a lot expecting updates; he stares more longingly than he is probably aware of at the outdoors, like an unruly puppy confined for his own safety. Still, he is always present and engaging when addressing Bucky, no reservations or second thoughts that Bucky can detect, his attention focused on whatever discussion or activity they partake in. He cracks his jokes so offhandedly that oftentimes Bucky can’t tell if he is serious at all, and talks about serious things so casually that they acquire a certain kind of simplicity. It’s still oddly domestic, but the cohabitation and rapport is so easy that Bucky lets his guard down just a little and basks in the forgotten wholesomeness of riffing off of someone he genuinely enjoys.

~

Footsteps on the stairs alert Bucky to Steve being awake. He keeps on his macramé knotting, tracing the trajectory of Steve’s route, knowing he’s heading to the kitchen.

Sure enough, Steve slides through the door a couple seconds later, hair ruffled, eyes bleary and adjusting to the soft light. “Hey.”

“Hey yourself,” Bucky greets.

“It’s 2 am,” Steve informs him, dropping onto his customary chair.

“I am aware,” Bucky replies mildly.

“Can’t sleep again?”

Bucky raises his eyebrows. “You gonna preach about not sleeping?”

Steve snorts a breathless chuckle. He can do with less sleep than most people, or so he claims. For all Bucky knows, he could be an insomniac too, or experience restless sleep cycles. They’ve oftentimes met afterhours on the steps or in a corridor in the dead middle of the night, exchanging curt nods as though they’re acquaintances meeting in shady alleys in Victorian London, proverbially pulling up their collars, dragging down their bowler hats and moving on.

Bucky swiftly knots cord through cord on his latest project, content in the repetition of the motion. He shoots a glance at Steve, who watches orbs float in and out of the camera screen.

“Have I told you about my sister?” Bucky asks, his voice gentle in the silence, the television on but muted. “And the orbs?”

Steve shakes his head. He props his elbow on the table, body angled toward Bucky, gaze interested.

“That” – Bucky nods at the screen – “is what keeps me company at nights. The things on camera.” He is aware how lonesome this might sound, but Bucky’s been anything but lonesome in his stay here, the solitude a balm; if Steve thinks it, he doesn’t indicate it. “So I told Becca about it – the animals, the orbs, the whole shebang. Now, we grew up telling each other ghost stories, tales about otherworldly things. I grew out of it,” he notes, “but Becca didn’t. Enter, orbs.”

“Ghosts,” Steve says with a warm smile.

“She was pretty convinced,” Bucky replies. “Told me to go outside and examine them up close; I didn’t. She told me to take pictures; I didn’t. She joked that I should use some ghost apps just in case–” he looks pointedly at Steve – “but it wasn’t a joke. So. She did what _any_ sensible person would do.”

“Sent over the ghostbusters?” Steve suggests.

“She knew I wouldn’t answer,” Bucky replies. “No, she went to a psychic.”

Steve blinks, then blinks again more slowly. “What?”

“Psychic sensed lots and lots of spirits,” Bucky says. “Suggested I sage the place.”

“Did you?” Steve asks.

Bucky shakes his head. “I’m perfectly fine living and letting live. Unless invisible men or some spirit start getting in,” he adds. “Then we’ll see.”

Steve cocks his head with a faint smirk. “Your house-sitting experience is rather eventful.”

“I’m an excellent house-sitter,” Bucky asserts. “Maybe I’ll turn it into a career. House-sitting from place to place, all around the world. Could put that army pension to good use – travel, house-sit, macramé, lather, rinse, repeat. See the Buckingham Palace,” he says, voice hitching up theatrically, “The Highlands. The Northern Lights.”

Steve sucks in his breath, eyes shining. “The Northern Lights.”

“Fjords,” Bucky continues. “The Parthenon, I don’t know. I haven’t traveled a lot, army aside.”

“Yeah, me either,” Steve says, fingers idly tracing patterns on the table.

Bucky looks at him, unimpressed.

“I mean, same as you,” Steve says, waving his hand. “I’ve travelled a lot for work, but I haven’t actually _seen_ much. We get in, we get out, and there’s all these things that I haven’t seen…” He takes a beat before he clarifies, “Or that I haven’t seen _this_ century.”

“Would you want to?” Bucky asks.

Steve deliberates for a moment, watching Bucky’s hands as he alternates cords and ties knots. “Sometimes–” He stops, then resumes with a slight frown, his eyes following Bucky’s hands, “Sometimes I think of – not _retiring_ , but riding off into the sunset until the next major catastrophe. Or just for a while. Travel the world, see it. Live it. Paint it.”

Bucky raises his eyebrows. “Paint it?”

“I – before everything, I tried to teach myself to paint better,” Steve says self-deprecatingly. “I can sketch well, but painting is different.”

“You can still do it,” Bucky says. “Travel. And paint.”

Steve tilts his head, a small resigned smile lingering on his lips. Bucky wants to reach over and smooth the frown on his brow, tangle his fingers in Steve’s hair and urge him to run off and live, heart stinging both at the idea of Steve leaving _and_ of Steve not living the way he desires. He wiggles, shoving his sentiments as deep inside as possible, and throws a proverbial heavy duvet over them for good measure.

“I considered it,” Steve says. “One thing would happen, then the next, one led to another – some of it real, some of it just misleading distractions or self-imposed nuisances, I guess–”

“Hey.” Bucky nudges Steve’s knee with his own. “You can still do it,” he asserts when he catches Steve’s eye. “You could start from, I don’t know, Italy. Rome. Florence. Good art museums there, right? Lots to see, lots to paint?”

“I’ve always wanted to see the Sistine Chapel,” Steve says, his tone shy in a manner Bucky hasn’t heard before. It is as though the subject is too dear to Steve to wound it with offensive, loud voices. “And David.”

“Right–”

“The Great Wall of China,” Steve goes on in the same small tone, a wistful twinkle in his eyes. “Croatia – stunning lakes and waterfalls. The Great Blue Hole.”

Bucky cocks his head. “Pardon?”

“In Belize,” Steve explains, beaming. “You can take a tour, dive in. It’s got the most beautiful formation, and the colors–”

“You’ve certainly given this a lot of thought,” Bucky remarks.

“Or Venice,” Steve continues, undeterred.

“I’ve always wanted to see Venice,” Bucky says with a crooked smile.

“Looks right out of a fairytale,” Steve says.

“You’d sure find things to paint,” Bucky observes. “Personally I’d just be taking pictures and strolling down the canal–”

“Well, we could sit for a caricature, that’d be fun,” Steve suggests, as though they’re amid planning an actual trip, booking accommodation and tickets any day now.

Bucky’s breath hitches, it’s no use denying it. His gullible brain instantly conjures up images of trips Steve and himself could take together, of a future that includes them in each other’s lives in some capacity. Bucky kicks the cloudy images away before they settle clear and solid, gently kicking out his foot under the table to reinforce his point to himself.

Still, Steve looks so buoyant that Bucky blurts, “We’d ride a gondola.”

“Yes!” Steve exclaims. “And we’d try pasta with sea urchins–”

Bucky jerks back, lips twisted in distaste. “No–”

“And there’s this dish called _Bottarga_ , with fish roe–”

“No!” Bucky leans back far enough that his chair balances on its back legs. “I don’t like seafood.”

“Okay,” Steve continues without missing a beat. “Pizza.”

“Yes,” Bucky agrees, chair legs dropping back down on the floor. “Pizza and _gelato_.”

“We could go to all the haunted places, send pictures to your sister,” Steve says with a grin. “Poveglia Island. Reportedly one of the most haunted places in Europe, if not the world. I think it’s not open to the public, but we’d arrange something.”

“Arrange something because of your friends in high places, or arrange something as in – let’s break in?” Bucky asks dryly.

“Both,” Steve says cheekily. “Either. We could go to Pompeii next.”

“It’s dead people,” Bucky grunts. “I know it’s a historic sight, but it’s dead people.” He stares at Steve, chewing his lower lip. “I’d go if you insisted, but I wouldn’t be happy about it. You’d have to make it up to me with maybe Prague.”

“Sure,” Steve says easily. “Budapest too. Romania, Dracula’s Castle.”

“Of course,” Bucky mutters; Steve is apparently intrigued by eerie things.

“Get on a train, hop from country to country with nothing but a backpack and goodwill,” Steve muses.

“And an easel,” Bucky adds.

Steve smiles, his eyes gentle. “We should do that.”

“Ride off into the sunset?” Bucky quips, but Steve’s words are genuine, Bucky’s wish to do so just as sincere. He might as well be floating in a pool of marshmallows, in a sugary, soft embrace. This path is dangerous to tread, but Bucky is overcome with _giddiness_ , the feeling so unfamiliar that he is at a loss as to how to process it.

Steve looks on at him earnestly, that silly smile still dancing on the edges of his lips. “Yeah.”

_What the hell_. It doesn’t hurt to say it, Bucky deludes himself; it _will_ hurt, later, a small voice in his mind whispers. “Yeah,” he musters, a little strained. “We should.”

Steve’s responding grin is almost blinding.

~

Bucky whiles away yet one more sleepless night in a row of nearly sleepless nights in the company of music and unfinished chores. A soft knock on the door stops him midway through folding clothes. Bucky hums out in question, only mildly surprised that Steve, too, is once again awake. Steve peeks in, his mop of blond hair followed by a grin amid his trimmed beard – a rugged Labrador; a human Ewok.

Steve pushes the door open. “Smells nice in here.”

“It’s–” Bucky gestures at the messy pile of clothes on his bed. “Freshly washed. Tidying up.”

“Mind if I help?” Steve asks, his tone light, but the tension around his eyes evident. He needs the company, and Bucky has no actual will to do without it.

He tilts his head, gesturing for Steve to enter. “You’d rather fold clothes than listen to your buddy cops on the radio?”

Steve snorts, dropping onto the bed. “You know I always prefer you.”

Bucky’s heart drops to his stomach, leaps into his throat and resettles in his chest with a triple somersault. He slowly, mechanically tries to fold the sweater in his hands, but the sleeves keep slipping. The folding turns never-ending as he stares at Steve brushing his fingers over Bucky’s clothes, enticing them in a clandestine balletic dance privy only to himself and household items. “I _do_ feed you,” Bucky says at length.

It must’ve been a long length, because Steve looks up startled that Bucky spoke. “What?”

“I feed you,” Bucky repeats dumbly, wanting viscerally Steve to tell him that he’s joking, that there’s nothing more to this arrangement than benefit and a surface-level amiability; needing Steve to tell him that maybe it’s more; _begging_ Steve to tell him it’s a joke, because Bucky is right on the precipice of silently falling in love, and with a push, he might go down and not resurface soon. “I–” He fumbles for words at Steve’s crestfallen look. “The house.” He gestures expansively. “You better prefer my company.”

“That what you think?” Steve asks stiffly.

Bucky shakes his head, shoulders shrugging minutely. “I don’t give it much thought.” His brain provides a clip of his mother shoving soap into his mouth for lying.

Steve visibly relaxes, Bucky’s lack of thought on it more acceptable than his genuinely thinking that he’s only useful. “That’s just a perk, and I’ll be always grateful.”

“A perk to what?” Bucky asks, hands frozen, numb around the sweater that he can’t hope to fold.

“Your company.” Steve flops onto his back, arms outstretched. He burrows one hand under the clothes, cozy. “The circumstances are terrible, but the actual thing is nice.”

“The thing,” Bucky echoes faintly.

“Living with someone,” Steve says to the ceiling. “Not just surviving. Actually living.”

Bucky swallows, his throat dry. He walks – or maybe floats – the two steps to his bed and drops on his back beside Steve, the bed shuddering like it’s been accosted by a moose. Steve turns to him with a warm chuckle, his blue eyes bright, tethering. The fabric softener tickles Bucky’s nose, the ylang-ylang and so-called Mediterranean breeze scent making him drowsy.

“It _does_ smell nice,” Bucky breathes.

“ _So_ nice,” Steve teases with a grin, brushing his hand back and forth under the clothes and nudging Bucky’s thigh.

“It’s been a while, yeah?” Bucky asks gently – or so he hopes. His voice comes out hoarse; perhaps he doesn’t know how to consciously be gentle anymore. “Since you’ve done the just-living?”

Steve’s grin hardens, melting into a tight line of regret. “A while,” he acquiesces. “Being both a fugitive and a vigilante is _surprisingly_ hard,” he jests in his usual blunt manner.

“What, no _Moët & Chandons_, parties and limousines?” Bucky plays along.

“Sadly, it’s a hard life of mostly just meet-ups in abandoned places and cheap wine,” Steve quips. “It’s not all bad,” he says soberly. “It’s just that the good parts are distractions; reprieves, while you wait for the next possible death sentence.”

“Right,” Bucky says. “’Cause you want to ride off into the sunset. You’re not a savior of the universe or some such.”

“It’s just–” Steve runs his fingers over the clothes, knuckles brushing Bucky’s left hand. “It’s nice to have a home to return to is all.”

Bucky nods. “It _is_ nice,” he says slowly, “having someone around.”

“You lonely?”

“N–” Bucky swallows, the conversation too intimate, the proximity too much. “Not in a way that hurts,” he says, forcing out what follows because it’s true, and Bucky needs to say it, “but this is nicer. And _that_ ,” he adds in a drawl, for levity’s sake and for his own sanity, “is quite the compliment coming from me, Stevie.”

“I know,” Steve says softly.

He’s earnest, and he’s close. Close enough to know that his eyelashes are offensively long, close enough to know he’s warm; close enough to kiss. A tilt of the head would be enough, an inhaled breath for courage and a rapid lock of lips–

Bucky’s head spins at the direction of his thoughts, images flitting in and out of his mind before his perplexed, widened eyes. His heart lurches at the intensity of the sensation that isn’t even real, so violently that he feels nauseous.

Steve sets his hand on Bucky’s left palm, loose and unmoving. It’s a simple gesture, minimal in its quietness, grounding in its factuality. It should send Bucky into a frenzy, but instead coaxes him back to the present, away from his impending panic of what isn’t and what he can’t allow himself to show.

“I do know,” Steve reiterates. Whatever expression he detects on Bucky’s face, however he interprets it, it makes his eyes gentle, his voice deliberately calm.

“Okay,” Bucky whispers, unsure on the discussion topic.

They stay silent, breathing in the fabric softener, breathing in the peace. _Queen_ croons in the distance begging the universe for somebody to love, and Bucky’s hand twitches under Steve’s at lyrics that hit too close to home, too unexpectedly. Steve folds his fingers over it as though in comfort. Bucky turns to him, but Steve’s eyes are closed, his mouth slack.

“’M not sleeping,” he mumbles after a beat.

“Okay,” Bucky says.

  


Quietly, Bucky crawls to turn off the bedside lamp, plunging the room into near darkness, broken only by the light of the moon spilling in through the window. The music hums, low and lulling, and Bucky settles back down beside Steve, shifting to get comfortable amidst the clothes. Steve smiles, eyes still closed, his face pearlescent under the moonbeams, and fumbles on the bed for Bucky’s hand. He finds Bucky’s hip instead and Bucky reaches, loosely entwining their fingers. Steve falls asleep shortly after, or maybe Bucky does; he loses track of time, floating in pleasant nothingness until he falls into a restful sleep.

It means nothing significant, of course, or so Bucky tells himself. It means nothing that the first sunrays don’t rouse him as per usual, that he sleeps in long after his wakeup time. It means nothing that he falls asleep holding Steve’s hand, and it means nothing that he wakes up with his face mushed against Steve’s shoulder. People who’ve seen war – literally, figuratively or both – need comfort, often seek it in ways that _could_ read as something else that isn’t there, and Steve has seen more than his fair share of that and so has Bucky. That’s all it is, or so Bucky insists as Steve grins dozily at him and wipes the sleep out of his eyes.

That’s all it is, but Bucky still pulls on one of the sweatshirts that now smells like Steve. It all comes down to stylistic choices; or so Bucky preaches.

~

Bucky runs, feet pounding on hard ground, the wind cooling his damp skin. It’s been a hot minute since he’s gone running, relying on the keeping of the grounds and calisthenics to maintain his strength and stamina, but his system is overflowing with a buzz he can’t quite get rid of and doesn’t know how to handle after sleeping – merely sleeping – with Steve. It’s silly; nothing’s really changed, but Bucky sidesteps Steve in an awkward dance, as though Bucky might scorch him just by touching him. Steve takes it all in stride, if he even notices at all. He lounges in the sunroom, possibly getting a tan; he sluggishly watches a soap opera; he fiddles with the radio frequencies, murmuring along with the police officers. Bucky stifles whines of vague frustration and ruffles his hair until the ends start breaking off. He wants to write a poem, crow a song. Were he a composer, this would be the time to put together the masterful part of his symphony, loud anguished crescendos mingling with sweeter, melancholic riffs of affection and longing.

But an artist Bucky ain’t, so running shall have to be enough.

He passes through the woods, legs aching, unused to this exertion and speed. He just about makes it to the ruins of the abbey before he completely runs out of breath, bending as he pants, heart pounding in his ears. Still, his head is now less full of tangled thoughts, his mind less anxious, so this is still a win, even if at a cost.

He keeps at it for a few moments, breathing in the earthy scent of soil and grass, absently gazing at the half-ruined, imposing stone walls around him. A susurrus of young voices makes him turn. The two teenagers approaching stop in their tracks when they spot him. The boy is taken aback, the girl positively dismayed. They both hold Bucky’s gaze, until the girl opens her arms and stomps her foot on the ground.

“Look, we stopped coming to your porch!”

Bucky pushes his hair out of his face and stands up straight. It’s been a long while since anyone has dropped by Bucky’s porch – Steve excluded – but the teenagers in question could be familiar, if seen miniaturized in grayscale.

“They told us not to, that it’s occupied, so we didn’t!” the girl insists.

Bucky shakes his head. “It’s fine. I’m just passing by.”

The girl raises her hands on her hips and harrumphs. “It’s a hell of a trek up here, I hope you’re happy!”

Bucky grimaces, bewildered. “What?”

“It’s far enough to walk up to your house, but to get here – it takes _hours_ ,” the girl gripes.

“Go somewhere else!” Bucky retorts, lips twisted in a frown.

“There’s nowhere else! We can’t hang out in the woods, we’re not savages,” the girl says haughtily.

“It’s bad enough when we manage to sneak out a scooter,” the boy mumbles.

Bucky shakes his head. “ _What?_ ”

The girl sighs a sigh to rival actors of Greek tragedies. She stomps past Bucky, the boy in tow. “We’re _inconvenienced_ ,” she snarls as she bypasses him without a second glance.

Bucky opens his mouth, but decides against retorting, the argument futile. He takes off, trotting and then running downhill towards the house, calmer than he’d started, albeit much more sweaty and ragged.

He steps into the kitchen in dire need of a shower. Steve, elbow deep in doing yesterday’s dishes, looks up at him and grins, the sun personified on a man’s face as per usual. He’s wearing one of Bucky’s hoodies, one that Bucky definitely hasn’t lent him. Bucky hijacks a small cup and circumvents Steve to water the herbs, tugging at the hoodie’s hem as he does so. Steve chuckles, the sound low and deep. His voice seeps down into Bucky’s bones and settles in his chest like a placid butterfly. Reflexively, he rests his palm on the small of Steve’s back as he leans over to water the basil. Steve shivers, so imperceptibly that Bucky would think that he’d imagined it, had Steve not followed up with a derisive snort. Discombobulated, Bucky pulls back with a jerk, chiding himself to get a grip. Steve apparently forgets he’s washing dishes and runs a foamy hand through his hair, lips twitching with a smile that he suppresses.

Bucky finishes the watering and chucks the cup on Steve’s pile in the sink. He pats Steve’s back and internally screams at himself to stop touching the guy.

“ _Hey, Deb_ ,” a male voice recognizable as Police Officer Marty’s says through the radio. “ _Wanna hear something funny?_ ”

“This should be good,” Steve mumbles.

Steve and Bucky don’t end up sleeping – and just sleeping – together again, but something does change in their coexistence. At the admittance of their mutually genuinely liking each other, conversations become intentional rather than incidental, offhand remarks over external stimuli willingly given rather than insufficiently held back. Late night pop culture chit chats over tea and macramé turn into deep discussions about existentialism and prom nights or lack thereof, nihilism and its quasi-presence in 70s rock bands; about things that are, that aren’t or that could be. Drowsy afternoons turn into sharing of strong coffee and heated arguments on whether music scores in movies are an asset or manipulation of the audience, the relative merits of straps on uniforms in terms of practicality and aesthetics, and assorted topics of the depth of a bottomless well and the significance of a raindrop that’s gone the millisecond that it hits the ground – a significance which also gets debated, although at this point, it’s understood that it’s debated for the sake of the debate. Bucky draws a definitive line over Han Solo being the best character in _Star Wars_ and Steve works himself up so much that he has to step into another room to cool off, after accidentally knocking a glass on the floor in his excitement.

Bucky is in love. He has denied it, has argued against it, has reasoned with it, but it’s there, shimmering, burning and alive. It would be a problem – it is, if he dwells on it too much – but in Steve’s presence he forgets to fuss about the future and gets busy living in the present, problems filed away to be perused at a later time.

~

“George found a stray, haggard kitten today. So apparently,” Becca says, glancing at her son sitting proud and a little bit defiant beside her, “we now have a cat.”

“Yes,” George states.

“Uh.” Bucky leans back in his chair; the enormously long bunny ears hanging off his hoodie – courtesy of George – weigh him to the side. At the head of the table Steve sketches, the scratching of his pencil too soft for the microphone to pick up. He did actually mean it that he sketches, and he’s currently working on depicting the window ledge with its herb pots and the view beyond. He’s good and fast, and now drawings of any and all subjects are scattered everywhere inside the house. Bucky grudgingly collects them in short piles, but secretly – or not so secretly, judging by Steve’s cheeky smirk – he loves it.

Off camera, Becca’s front door opens. George snaps to attention. He spins in his chair, perking up. “Daddy’s home! He brought Kitty from the vet.”

“Okay,” Becca mutters with a small pout.

“Dad!” George calls off to the distance. He turns to Bucky, his eyes shining and wide. “It’s Dad!” he informs him.

“Goodbye, child,” Bucky intones dramatically.

George waves frantically and scrambles off, the squeaks of his delight fading in the distance.

Becca slumps down on her chair and sighs.

“You’re not so keen on cats,” Bucky says tactfully.

“I am _not_ ,” Becca replies. “Their damn howling and yowling gave me nightmares for years, dammit.”

“I’m aware,” Bucky reminds her.

“Maybe I’ll grow to love her. She’s so small,” Becca says with a remorseful frown. She shakes her head, making a dismissive sound. “How’ve you been?”

Bucky nods. “Doing all right.”

“Still keeping up with the good ol’ news of the world?” Becca says, twirling a lock of her hair.

“Sadly yes,” Bucky says sourly. In the corner of his eye, Steve smirks.

“You know what I got?” Becca leans forward, grabbing something out of frame. With a flourish, she presents Bucky with a lipstick. She takes the cap off, showcasing the peachy color against her open palm.

“Okay,” Bucky says, bemused. “Good for you?”

“Black Widow got it,” Becca says mournfully, securing it closed. “Star-crossed lover Natasha Romanoff.”

Steve perks up into attention, eyebrows arched, eyes amused. He shakes his head in a question – _who._

Bucky wishes he were wearing earbuds. He clears his throat and sits up straighter, quickly running through excuses of a malfunctioning laptop. Steve kicks him gently under the table, intent as he cocks his head – _who_.

“She and Steve Rogers,” Becca continues unprompted.

Steve snorts and returns to his sketch. Bucky goes from a comfortable temperature to something closer to two hundred degrees. He hopes his agitation doesn’t show, or that Steve doesn’t look up to see it.

“It’s on a tabloid, so, you know, whatever,” Becca goes on dismissively. “But listen, she was in a store, the pics were paparazzi pics, which, I know, despicable, _but_ –” she raises a finger – “she was getting this lipstick, and if Black Widow’s getting something, call me crazy, but if she approves, then it’s good enough for me–”

Bucky twists his lips. “Wait – what?”

“I know,” Becca says with a groan, dropping back in her chair and folding her arms. “I’m such a sucker for these things. ‘Oh, Black Widow approves? Sure I’ll buy it.’ D’you think it was a marketing ploy? But I don’t think she’d need the money–”

“Star-crossed lovers?” Bucky cuts in with a scowl, shaking the hood off his head, fanning his face with a long ear as he pretends to toy with it. “Black Widow and Captain America?”

“So they said,” Becca says. “She grieves because he’s off the grid, blah blah blah.” She rolls her eyes. “As if she couldn’t find him in a heartbeat.”

Steve grins approvingly.

“But it’s the tabloids, it’s probably just lies and speculation,” Becca says.

“Mm-hmm,” Bucky musters. This situation is absurd, this very conversation taking place in Steve fucking Rogers’ presence. It’s a little more than absurd, it’s _embarrassing_ , because Bucky’s stomach has currently sunk somewhere into the unfathomable depths of the Mariana Trench, his jealousy reaching levels that he didn’t even know he was capable of achieving. He is entitled to neither feeling, which in turn fills him with a stone cold fear that renders him too stunned to react in any meaningful way. “Mmm,” he adds for good measure.

“Anyway, we only see what they want us to see,” Becca says.

Steve tilts his head appreciatively.

“Got their own lives and all,” Becca goes on. “I don’t know what Captain America is up to, but I’m sure Black Widow isn’t grieving over him, I’d bet she knows where he is. A god he ain’t, he’d still need allies to keep himself alive.”

Bucky accidentally smacks his bunny ear over his cheek. He carefully sets the ear down on his thigh and wills himself to sit still. Steve’s suppressed sniggering does not help.

“Sure,” Bucky says; he goes for casual, but it comes out almost sarcastic. He glances at the unwashed dishes in the sink courtesy of Steve, at the paper carefully angled on the table so that Steve doesn’t get smudges on Bucky’s macramé project; at the cardigan half-falling off a spare chair, where Steve discarded it and never picked it back up. “He ain’t a god,” he echoes, sincere enough. “He’s Steve.”

“Yeah, everything else is just a title,” Becca says. “You were a sergeant, but you’re also James. You don’t stop being James when you’re a sergeant, but you can stop being a sergeant and you’re still James.” She frowns, her nose crinkling. “Am I making sense?”

Judging from the plump hearts that Steve has drawn on his page and is shaking at Bucky, yes, yes, she is. Bucky squirms in his seat, the need to just tell Becca everything burning a hole in the middle of his chest.

“Although I don’t think we’re calling him Captain America these days,” Becca adds.

This is snarky territory; this, Bucky can handle. “What then, Villainous Scoundrel?” he suggests. “Pesky Vigilante?”

Becca laughs; Steve softly guffaws; Bucky quietly stews.

He is fully aware later, after the chat with Becca has wrapped up, long after Steve has finished his sketch and has moved on to sketching cacti on the side, what a ridiculous picture Bucky must make. He is fully aware how ridiculous he sounds, in his ridiculous hoodie, after he has ridiculously Googled the tabloids in question wherein Natasha looks astoundingly non-threatening, when he crosses his arms and says slowly, “So. Natasha, huh.” He uncrosses his arms; too defensive. He doesn’t know _what_ to do with his arms. He grips the bunny ears and hopes for the best.

Steve raises an eyebrow.

“ _Natasha Romanoff – Steve Rogers_ ,” Bucky reads off of the laptop screen. “ _Star-crossed lovers? Does the redheaded fierce Avenger remind Rogers of his best girl, Margaret Carter?”_

“Jesus,” Steve mutters disdainfully.

“Says here,” Bucky says nonchalantly, mentally commending himself for his tone that _can_ be construed as teasing instead of prying, which is what it really is, “you’ve been linked with numerous ladies, starlets, newscasters and high-profile executives, but Natasha is the one staple in your life.”

“I literally have not been with a woman in this century,” Steve asserts with a headshake.

“Been with a man?” It slips out before Bucky can swallow down the words – and _now_ Bucky can swallow, audibly so.

Steve looks at him, expression easy. “Yeah, actually.”

_All right. Okay_.

This, Bucky didn’t quite expect. Hoped, maybe, or dreaded even, lest these pesky hopes of his get an energy boost and start having ideas. He stares at Steve for a second too long, a little too unblinking, his eyes getting dry, his face blank. He should say something witty; something charming; something snarky; _something_ , period. He raises his hand, curls it in a fist bump, mortified as he watches himself do it. “Welcome to the club.”

  


Steve snorts, bumping Bucky’s fist with his own. “Been in it long before yourself, but sure, thanks.” He ducks his head back to his sketch, lips twitching in a grin that he can’t actually contain; it’s gleeful, untamable.

Unnerving.

Bucky presses his mouth in a tight line. It is unclear if Steve already suspected, or if he’s just now piecing things together and is possibly coming up with the conclusion that Bucky might just fancy him. It is unclear if Steve spares any thought to it at all, or if Bucky acts caught out because he’s guilty. Agitated, Bucky pushes his chair back and all but stomps to the sink for something to do – _wash the fucking dishes, say, that stupid Steve didn’t fucking wash_ –

A vibration on the table splits the silence. Sketch and pencil abandoned, Steve grabs the burner phone before the second ring. “Hey, lover,” he coos playfully. “You doing publicity stunts?” He laughs heartily at the answer he gets.

Bucky shamefully all but swoons at the sound, wet mug almost slipping out of his grip, as though he hasn’t heard Steve laugh before; as though the sound isn’t always a pleasant tickling of his soul.

“Sam?!” Steve exclaims. “Sam, hey. God, how are you, Jesus…”


	3. Chapter 3

Bucky assembles the package of his latest shipment, an unlikely purchase of a monochromatic throw that’s been on his shop for longer than he can remember. The radio crackles out the occasional offhand comment of Police Officer Dave, an admittedly far less chatty fellow than his counterpart, Police Officer Bob, who when paired with Dispatch Control Jim is a real hoot.

“Yeah, we’re fine.”

Bucky turns at Steve’s voice, the comment directed to his phone.

Steve walks quickly to the radio and turns it off. “Yeah. How’re the Accords coming along?” He nods at the answer, ‘Uh-huh’s, but his face gets progressively impatient. He opens his mouth to retort, then decides against it and jams his hand on his hip. “It’s all about politics, yes, but _I’m_ not at all about politics,” he remarks. He clicks his tongue at the answer. “Right. Right, play the game, yeah.” He sighs, softly enough to go undetected on the other line. “Yes. Take care.” Phone off his ear, Steve taps his finger against it, his mouth a pinched line.

Bucky studiously presses tape on the package to secure its contents.

Steve looks up at him, hard lines crinkling the edges of his eyes. “I’m not ‘all about politics’; they keep forgetting.”

“Pretty sure it’s the first thing about you that they remember, pal,” Bucky says mildly, reluctant to encourage Steve’s quietly brewing ire.

Steve shakes his head. He turns on the radio, but the police frequency is silent.

Bucky gathers his tape, scissors and assorted packaging material to store away, but frowns at the dejected look on Steve’s face. He’s not really to blame. It _has_ been months, and Steve _is_ confined in one place; his life and fate are on the line while Steve waits, unable to assist in this win with his hands tied thus. He needs a reprieve, or so Bucky deems, and has a tentative idea of how to get it to him.

Bucky’s downtown run is quick and efficient. Steve is in the sunroom when Bucky returns, slouched in a wicker chair, lost in a book, concealed behind large sunglasses and a baseball hat. Outside, birds chirp and sing out so loudly that they might as well be in the room.

Bucky knocks on the open door to draw Steve’s attention.

Steve lifts his head, flashing a cheeky grin. “I miss the sun.”

“You wanna start strolling out in broad daylight?” Bucky says lightly, hip jutting out as he folds his arms and leans against the doorframe. “Getting cocky, are we.”

“Bratty,” Steve supplies.

“Oh, he’s self-aware,” Bucky remarks with a crooked smile.

“Just helping out with the assessment,” Steve replies.

“I got you something.”

Steve raises his eyebrows. “If it’s something snarky–”

Standing up straight, Bucky clicks his tongue. He walks out and comes back with two white sheets. He drops them on the floor and crouches, pushing back furniture to make space. He stretches the sheets out, covering as much of the floor as they can reach. He gets back up to his feet, wipes his palms against each other and hums a satisfied hum at his blank creation.

Steve stares at the sheets. “Thanks?” he says, bemused.

Bucky rolls his eyes. He darts out of the room again, returning with an easel on one hand, a bag of brushes and paints on the other, and canvasses propped awkwardly against his sides. Steve is taken aback, but Bucky pays him no particular attention. He sets the easel on the sheets, lets the bag drop onto the floor and sets the canvasses gently beside it.

“There’s more where that came from,” he says, gesturing at the canvasses. “The – I mean the living room, there’s more in the living room.”

Steve, uncharacteristically silent, takes in the items strewn around him.

“You said you wanted to practice painting,” Bucky says, hands on his hips. “Might as well.”

“I – The…” Steve shakes his head. He distractedly takes off the sunglasses, sets them on the table along with his book, and drags the bag toward him. “Thank you,” he says earnestly.

Bucky shrugs, masterfully putting on nonchalance and inwardly filled with relieved pride.

“You didn’t have to,” Steve says, the comment instantly rendered null, overshadowed by the glimmer in his eyes and the anticipation of his hands as he rummages and discovers the various brushes and paint colors. He lifts his head, beaming. “Thank you.”

Bucky makes a dismissive sound. “’S fine.”

Steve raises his eyebrows, eyes wide with the telltale glimmer of inspiration. “Sit for me?”

Bucky blinks. “Huh?”

“It’s only fair that I start with you,” Steve says. “Actually it’s unfair, ‘cause it’ll be far from good at this point, but still.” He nods encouragingly. “Sit for me?”

“I, uh.” Bucky shuffles his feet, self-conscious about being the sole subject of Steve’s artistic scrutiny. He fumbles for a reason to refuse, but he’s already agreed to it on the inside, unwilling to turn down Steve’s eagerness. “Do _not_ get paint _anywhere_ ,” he warns in a growl. “That’s what the sheets are for.”

“Of course,” Steve replies, already pulling paints and brushes out of the bag with gentle hands. He even has the foresight to dispose of the chair cushions just to be safe. Bucky appreciates the thought so much that he forgets to grumble about angles and poses. He curls up on the chair opposite Steve and his canvas, sets the laptop to playing space documentaries and tries to stay still for the long while that follows.

When the sun starts to go down and Bucky’s so starved that he might resort to gnawing on his own hand, he looks up from his millionth documentary to catch Steve frowning at his creation and biting his tongue. His beard looks spun out of gold under the mellow fading light, his eyes clear and focused, brush and palette held steady in his hands. He makes such a pleasing picture of an artist at work that he might as well be a painting of his own.

“Hey,” Bucky calls.

Steve starts, lifting his eyes off of the canvas.

“What’s up? You done?”

Steve makes an uncertain low sound. “Eh,” he says eventually. “It’s just a draft, I don’t…”

Bucky disentangles himself from the chair, his legs sore and protesting the lengthy stillness. He stumbles, mumbling an “Ow” and glaring at the floor as though it’s out to get him. Taking the two remaining steps to Steve, he sidles over to see himself in acrylic paints.

He does not quite expect to see stick figures or himself reimagined as cubes – an acceptable, but certainly bold choice – but he does not quite expect this either, a baroquesque shadowy background against a portrait with the luminosity of renaissance art. Bucky’s depiction is a point of light, warm colors against a blend of bleakness, his gaze soft and deep, his lips quizzically quirked up just so, wisps of his hair falling ethereally to the sides of his face. Portrait-Bucky seems to glow against the darkness that surrounds him, quietly strong, gently adamant.

Bucky’s breath stutters and hitches; something deep inside him twists. It is himself, identifiably so, but it isn’t him at all. It’s Bucky the way Steve sees him and it sends Bucky’s heart skittering in his throat, limbs numb and weak with humbleness and trepidation that Bucky cannot possibly live up to this; that this is who Bucky really is deep inside; this is who Bucky wants to be.

Steve scowls. “What?”

Bucky shakes his head, Steve’s voice rousing him into the present. “I–”

“Be honest,” Steve interjects. “If it’s the hair, I’ll add more highlights, lowlights. If it’s the eyes, I know,” he says with a small huff. “I just can’t get that color right–”

Bucky makes a strangled noise. “No, I–”

“It changes all the time. It’s grey, and blue, and – I’ll blend–” Steve halters at Bucky’s rebuttal. He glances at the painting. “The frown?” he asks, running a finger over the corresponding spot between his eyebrows. “It’s a little deep, I got carried away, but in my defense, you frown at me 24/7.”

Bucky flails his hands. “Stop. You did me many favors.”

Steve tilts his head. “How?”

“It’s–” Bucky licks his lips. “It’s beautiful, Steve, it’s just–”

“Just what?” Steve queries.

“Too kind?” Bucky says uncertainly. “Generous?”

“Far from it,” Steve disagrees with a hand wave.

Bucky clears his throat. “I’m not…”

“What?” Steve angles his body toward Bucky, nudging his hand. “Do you _like_ it?”

“Yes,” Bucky says definitively. “Yeah, yes.” He lightly bumps his fist on Steve’s shoulder. “What a great idea I had, huh?”

Steve scoffs out a chuckle.

“You should start practicing still life,” Bucky says, paving pebble by pebble the path to a casual conversation that does not involve him fumbling for words in a quicksand pit of nearly incapacitating gratitude. “You wanna be quick with those, for–” _the_ – “our trips.” It slips out; it feels right. “For when–” _you_ – “we go painting in the Louvre and such.”

“Yes,” Steve asserts. “Yes, you’re absolutely right. Hold that.” He shoves the palette and brush into Bucky’s hands and takes to the floor, beside his paints. “These need washing, you trust me with it?” He gestures at the items in Bucky’s hands.

“N–” Bucky shakes his head. “I’ll do it.”

Steve absently squeezes Bucky’s ankle as he organizes the paints in order of color. Moving to and fro, he’s on his knees and dangerously close to Bucky’s nether regions, veins prominent against his hands and neck as he half-hums an unidentified tune so low that what comes out is gentle moans. Bucky swallows down a breath and backsteps before his body language betrays him. Birds twitter in the distance, uncaring that for them it’s near bedtime. Steve sets purples next to blues next to greens. Bucky suspects they’ll soon need to order new hues, along with possibly an apron. Whether Bucky is carried away or Steve feels just about the same, the once again domestic moment is another brick in the proverbial wall of domestic moments that Bucky nurtures, and suspects he will wallow in, should that time come.

~

Bucky leans back against the couch and stretches his shoulders, securing the laptop on his cross-legged lap. He groans as his neck pops, and pouts childishly at the camera.

“That’s what happens to people who run miles,” Becca says, filing her nails in the rare quiet of her living room. “Sure, it’s healthy, but at what cost?”

Bucky scoffs. The cost is hugely outweighed by the benefits, namely the release of Bucky’s constantly surging and expanding affection and yearning over a certain blond man currently breathing in fresh night air on the back porch.

Becca looks up at Bucky. “Take that silly thing off, George is asleep.”

Bucky wraps a finger around the elfin ears of his olive-colored beanie, then brushes down its tail that reaches past his shoulders. “ _Silly_ ,” he echoes. “How dare you.”

Becca snorts out a laugh. “Our kitty pretty much scratched up all of the furniture,” she informs him, catching Bucky up. “Decimated my leather jacket before I realized what was up.”

“My wild raccoons are tamer than your kitty,” Bucky remarks.

“They say pets take after their owners,” Becca says.

Bucky arches his eyebrows. “You saying you’re – what? Rebellious?”

“I’m saying you’re – hmm.” Becca sags. “I didn’t think this through. Unobtrusive? Sneaky?”

“Why, I never,” Bucky says flatly.

“Oh please, I still look into rooms before stepping in after all those times you snuck up on me way back when,” Becca snaps in one breath.

Bucky grins smugly. “Still got it.”

“Never doubted it,” Becca says dryly.

“I snuck up on someone at the farmer’s market the other day,” Bucky says. “He pisses me off ‘cause he looks at me weird.”

“Screw him,” Becca replies, ever the supportive sister.

“He’s all intrusive questions and probing,” Bucky says. “‘ _Why’re you a house-sitter, where are the owners, why do they need a house-sitter, you ain’t coming to town too often are you, what are you doing up there in that house all by your lonesome_ _har har’_. So I sneaked up on him just for kicks.”

“I hope he shrieked,” Becca says.

“Eh, just jumped a little,” Bucky replies. “I think he was alarmed that I willingly struck up conversation with him.”

“You are, after all, a rare cryptid,” Becca eggs him on.

“Look me up on Wiki,” Bucky says. “Won’t find anything, ‘cause – cryptid.”

“Mmm.” Becca twists her lips in an unamused smile, inspecting her nail work. “Buck,” she starts after a small silence. She wipes her hands against her shirt and leans toward the camera. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Bucky blinks, thrown. “Huh?”

“You look–” Becca pauses. “Different. Content. What’s going on?”

Bucky’s eyes drift toward the sunroom; past that is the back porch – and Steve. Bucky is too relieved that Steve isn’t present to hear this question; so relieved that he is not even concerned about coming up with a valid answer. “Nothing, just settling in.”

“Settling in,” Becca repeats, rightly unconvinced.

“Shop’s going well,” Bucky improvises. “No plants have died, no termites–”

“Yeah, okay,” Becca stops him. “The house is still standing, well done.”

Bucky clears his throat. He scratches his nose, then his chin, then stops scratching himself before Becca calls him out for lying, or for getting a sudden case of the hives. “Same old, same old.”

“Right.” Becca doesn’t believe him – Bucky didn’t think she would – but she doesn’t push. Nothing she can possibly imagine could come close to the truth.

‘The truth’ is sprawled on a patio chair on the back porch. Bucky steps toward the double door with deliberately audible steps, alerting Steve before he actually gets there. Steve turns and flashes him a radiant smile, one that Bucky instantly returns; he ducks his head, slightly embarrassed at his eagerness.

Steve reaches out his hand. “Sit with me?”

Technically, Bucky shouldn’t. Technically, if for any absurd reason that absurd things tend to happen they are spotted, Bucky could claim he has some random company, but it could still attract suspicion, and outsiders’ suspicions can do no favors to either Steve or Bucky. Technically–

_Fuck it_. Bucky takes Steve’s hand and steps outside, sitting beside Steve. The distance separating them is almost arm-length, but _fuck that too_. Bucky doesn’t release Steve’s hand, loosely holding on to him as he stares up at the night sky. Steve curls his hand around Bucky’s just a little tighter, so there’s that. There _is_ that. 

Bucky glances at him, intimidating wonder igniting in his mind. If Steve–

“Stars don’t shine in New York like that,” Steve says softly.

Bucky dispels his thoughts of ‘if’ and ‘maybes’ and turns back to the sky, to the stars twinkling against the canopy of darkness. “They don’t.”

“You know stake-outs, and keeping watch?”

Bucky arches his eyebrows. “Obviously–”

Steve impatiently tugs Bucky’s hand. “Just let me speak. Keeping watch,” he resumes quietly, on par with the night silence. “Back in the war, we’d do that for hours, on all kinds of terrain. Supposedly it was one person per watch, but” – he shrugs – “you know how it is. We often ended up in pairs.”

Bucky nods.

“And we’d do this thing,” Steve says with a soft smile. “The hours were long, and sometimes you just run out of words eventually, so, we’d do this thing. We’d make up constellations, and their stories.”

“Constellations?” Bucky asks, bewildered.

“Yes, just pointing at random stars – and the stars were always so bright out there,” Steve says, furrows forming on his brow. “It was jarring, almost. All this beauty among so much violence.”

“You pointed at random stars and then what?” Bucky prompts.

“We’d say” – Steve indicates random spots in the sky – “this and this and that are a triangle-shaped constellation.”

Bucky crinkles his nose. “I’ve no idea what you pointed at.”

Steve breathes out a chuckle. “I’m pretty sure no two of us ever looked at the same stars that we deemed constellations. But it didn’t really matter; the stories mattered. How these random beings, terrestrial and extraterrestrial, ended up as clusters of stars up on the sky. And you know what? Much, _much_ later…” He shakes his head. “About three years ago, I found out that Gabe, one of my team, the Howling Commandos, he–” Steve huffs, amused– “he wrote down all the stories he remembered, illustrated them and made a book for his children.”

Bucky whistles in appreciation. “That’s incredibly nice.”

“Well,” Steve says, eyes shining with wicked glee, “he only got to give it to them after they came of age.”

Bucky groans, palming his face with his metal hand. “Right. Army stories.”

“Right,” Steve agrees. “Things had a tendency to escalate quickly.”

Bucky lets out an understanding snort.

“Our leading characters just wanted to live a life before becoming celestial bodies, you know?” Steve says with a smirk, his thumb absently tapping Bucky’s hand. “That’s what I miss in cities; any city. The stars don’t shine so bright.”

“It’s all the damn lights,” Bucky drawls ruefully. “You a country boy?”

“Nah,” Steve says with a small smile. ~~~~

Bucky licks his lips, gaze turning back up to the shimmering sky. “I used to cling to that a lot too,” he says, voice coming out husky. “The stars, the moon.” In his peripheral vision, Steve nods, encouraging. “It’s just. It just _is_ ,” Bucky continues. “It’s a grounding point, you know? The one thing that was always constant when we were out there. And–” He falters, glancing at Steve, his lips twitching in a dubious smile. “This is gonna be extra.”

“Go on,” Steve replies.

“The universe out there is vast, and huge,” Bucky complies. “And you’re small – you’re just a guy with a gun and some Kevlar, under millions of stars, under Mars and Mercury and Pluto – don’t test me, _and Pluto_ ,” he warns preemptively, eliciting a smile out of Steve. “We’re in the Milky Way among billions of galaxies – we’re so small!” he repeats, getting excited. “So whatever troubles you seems like it’s nothing, it’s a random worry of a random speck in a random universe, nothing _really_ matters. _But_ ,” he continues, turning to Steve, whose eyes are shining brighter than any star in all of creation, “if nothing really matters, anything you want to matter, matters. Right? _You_ assign meaning where it doesn’t exist. Nothing is, in a sense, anything, so everything can be something, so _you_ can be everything. In a sense,” he concludes abashedly, cheeks heating up under Steve’s openly fond expression. “There’s a certain freedom in that. You see that?”

Steve nods.

“And through all that change and meaning reassignment–” Bucky draws a flat line in the air with his metal hand – “the stars and the moon and the sky are just _there_ , constant, oblivious; not giving a shit.” He shrugs. “Grounding.”

Steve beams, his eyes crinkling at the edges. A thrill radiates off of him, so strongly that Bucky wants to giggle. He bites down on the inside of his lower cheek, and twirls his fingers around his beanie’s tail.

“It is,” Steve agrees. “It _is_ grounding.”

“You miss it?” Bucky asks. “The olden golden days?”

Steve barks out a startled laugh. “I wouldn’t call them golden.” He shifts, getting comfortable, fingers still loosely threaded with Bucky’s. “It’s not the ‘olden’ days that I miss,” he says, the quotation marks audible in his tone. “In many ways, things are better now.” He inhales a long breath. “I miss the things I didn’t get to see. That I didn’t get to be there for. Friends growing old, building a life. I just woke up one day and they were all ninety.”

“Jesus, ninety,” Bucky mumbles. “I forget you’re ancient.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “Biologically–”

“You’re world-weary,” Bucky retorts.

“I happen to have it on good authority that you’re a year older than me,” Steve says smugly. “So.”

Bucky gasps, more theatrically than the statement warrants. “On good authority?”

“Suck it up,” Steve says, twice as smug now.

“In that case, that makes me the wise man between us, therefore you should occasionally shut up and listen,” Bucky retorts.

“Right, of course,” Steve acquiesces mockingly. “The wise man.”

Bucky clicks his tongue. “Youths these days. So impolite.”

Unexpectedly, the ‘olden golden days’ become something of a joke. Maybe it’s an easy excuse for banter, or maybe Bucky’s question drummed up something within Steve that’s too close for him to let go of. Either way, Steve unapologetically decides to be a little shit about it. The very next morning, sat at the kitchen table, he sighs a disproportionately heavy sigh, given the non-gravity of the situation.

Bucky, spreading butter on bread, sneaks him a dubious look. They’ve run out of ham. It’s not that tragic. It is a fate that befalls all households, on occasion.

“You know,” Steve says slowly, fingers absently toying with a macramé cord, “in the _olden golden days_ , we had ham when we so wished to.”

“Really,” Bucky says flatly, not giving the claim any weight. He barely knows enough about those days to verify the ease and feasibility of purchasing ham at one’s whim.

“I miss _ham_ ,” Steve states. “That’s what I miss. Ham.”

“Okay,” Bucky humors him.

It sounds innocuous enough, but Bucky should’ve known better. Soon, it becomes _a thing_ that spreads like wildfire and elicits groaning protests out of Bucky. Steve ‘misses’ the olden golden days – and Bucky comes to hate that he ever used that expression in the first place – at every minor inconvenience.

“I miss rhumba,” he declares with a mischievous glint in his eyes during a late night on the back porch.

Bucky, numbingly cold but only mildly dressed like an onion, glances at Steve. “What?”

“In the olden golden days, we had rhumba,” Steve says. “I miss it.”

“You liked to dance?” Bucky queries.

Steve shakes his head mournfully. “Hated it. But I miss it.”

He does not, and Bucky’s clicks his tongue, vexed.

“I miss Chinese Checkers,” Steve states apropos of nothing, as though he can’t easily get the damn thing now, and “I miss _Bride of Frankenstein_ ”, as though he can’t just watch it. “I miss people being gracious enough to say good morning,” he declares when Bucky groggily trudges into the kitchen half-asleep, grunting and glaring. Bucky considers throwing the coffee machine at him – Steve would catch it in time anyway – but quickly chastises himself for sacrilege and cuddles the precious thing against his chest, cooing at it a little. “I miss tenderness,” Steve deadpans, when Bucky serves dinner and accidentally clatters the plates against the table. “I miss having clean water glasses,” he booms dramatically as he paints, too engrossed to change the dirty water himself.

It’s a dark and stormy night, in that cliché manner that makes universally common phenomena become cliché. Rain strums hard against the window panes, trees groan and bend under the howling of the wind, a white noise that drowns out the routine of the mundane and encloses the town in a liminal bubble of hail. Inside the kitchen, on the police radio, Dispatch Control Deb and Police Officer Marty offer running commentaries of ‘A thunderstorm of biblical proportions’ and ‘Wouldn’t be surprised if it started raining frogs’ and ‘Who knew the apocalypse would start in our teeny tiny town, oh well.’

“I’m surprised no one has suggested that it could be Thor,” Bucky remarks, weaving macramé knots on a nearly completed wall hanging. Timely thunderbolt and lightning muffles his voice, but dramatically accentuates his statement.

Steve, eyes flicking off the laptop screen and a Bob Ross tutorial to Bucky, grins.

“All hail,” Bucky adds offhandedly.

Steve tilts his head. “All hail Thor?”

“You do speak highly of him.” Bucky shrugs. “I’m sold. Although–” he pauses for the crack of thunder – “I think I prefer Hawkeye, somewhat.”

“But you don’t approve of bows and arrows,” Steve points out.

“I sure fucking don’t, pal. Get yourself an indestructible suit and some kind of weapon that matters, what the hell,” Bucky agrees. “But since it is what it is, he’s kind of a sniper. I was a sniper.”

“Solidarity,” Steve says.

Bucky nods. “Mm-hmm.”

“Thanks,” Steve says dryly, then sniffles dramatically. “I miss being appreciated.”

“’Course you do,” Bucky mumbles.

“In the olden days–”

Bucky hums a tune over Steve’s voice, picking up in volume when he gets Steve’s attention. “ _Who woke the giant that napped in America_ …”

Steve sobers up fast. Huffing, he flicks Bucky’s knuckles with his finger. Bucky slowly completes his knot, sits up straight and flicks Steve’s fingers back with the ferociousness of an overly aggressive hedgehog. Steve grins; of course Steve grins, like the mischievous oversized imp that he is. His eyes twinkle, kind and bright as they contrast with his always impeccably trimmed, albeit raggedly so, short beard. Bucky could swear Steve watches tutorials over the shabby chic aesthetic. Unruly bangs fall over his forehead and cling to his eyelashes, his now somewhat longer hair not getting the special treatment that his beard obviously does. His chunky cardigan renders him almost offensively snuggly. They might as well be in a cabin in the woods, the both of them toiling over a broth in the shuddering light of a fireplace.

Bucky forcibly clenches his fist to stop himself from brushing away Steve’s bangs. “I–” He narrows his eyes, dubious at himself for wanting to get the sentiment out. “I’ll miss _you_ though.”

Steve blinks, startled. “What?”

“When you go,” Bucky clarifies quietly. “I’ll miss you.” It’s hard to admit, a sizable chunk of Bucky’s soul extracted out of him and brought out in the open for inspection; it’s easy to admit, a weight on his soul proffered to the universe, shared with Steve, less heavy to carry like this than on his own.

Steve leans close to Bucky ever so slightly, their hands almost – but not quite – touching. “I…” Thunder cracks, lightning attacking the room with fleeting harsh light. Steve scowls. “If…”

Bucky nibbles the inside of his cheek, waiting. “Hmm?”

The tension in the room is palpable, the air almost static. Bucky’s heart beats double time, a gong banging in his ears. The storm picks up in tandem, proverbial rocks made out of rain pelting the walls and roof that cling on for dear life. Steve fumbles for words, then gives up with a soft smile, pulling back.

Bucky licks his lips, his breathing shallow. He wants to test the waters, taste the space of what isn’t being said, but with their mandatory cohabitation and his not-that-unfragile heart, he is not certain that he should, or even how to do it. The noise hinders lucid thinking, the storm swallowing all in a black hole of unreality. The howling wind will drown away the jarring words. The uncaring rain pellets will wash away unreciprocated actions.

Bucky shifts and gently cups Steve’s knee under the table. He doesn’t know what he expects from this, what reaction would be welcoming or guiding. A knee is a knee, and Steve and he touch each other too often for it to stand for anything more than what it is. “Say you left tomorrow,” Bucky says, his voice hoarse under the trepidation of the words that follow. “What would you do tonight?”

It’s innocent enough, an open-ended, innocuous question that puts the ball in Steve’s court. Steve takes a short breath to speak; Bucky sees it rather than hears it, the sound too soft to pick up under the rain. Steve’s lips part slowly, tantalizingly, his eyes fixed on Bucky’s. He reaches out, hand cupping Bucky’s cheek. Bucky leans into it, his mind and body mush under Steve’s touch. Steve lets out a trembling breath and kisses him, lips locking softly on chapped lips, a gentle pressure, a quick caress that’s over soon; too soon. Bucky reels with giddiness, light-headed at the overwhelming thrill, the cautious exhilaration of his circumstance. Steve breaks off the kiss and pulls back. Bucky’s eyelids flutter cartoonishly when he opens his eyes that he does not remember closing. His heart swells and beats a rhythm outside of his chest, as though he’s an animated character with twinkling stars floating over his head. Dispatch Control Deb and Police Officer Marty jabber on about the rain and gale, their voices small and meaningless.

Steve watches him, silent and tense. Bucky slides his hand over Steve’s wrist and nods, then nods again with inviting fervor. Steve lights up, beaming like the brightest sun, brighter than the sun could ever do so. He lets out a chuckle of relief and Bucky is all over him in a second, swiftly climbing into Steve’s lap, limbs tangled in a messy and desperate attempt to be as close as possible, eliminate every inch between them. Their breaths, discordant and shuddering, blend with the sound of the storm and of the frantic ruffling of their clothes. Their hands roam over each other’s bodies, caressing, grabbing, squeezing, holding on tight. Steve’s fingers tangle in Bucky’s hair; Bucky clings to Steve’s shoulders, strong and solid under Bucky’s merciless grip. Tongues brush against each other, noses and teeth clash, smiles mingle with need in a medley of lust, longing and affection.

They pull apart for breath, foreheads tipped against each other, chests heaving in near wheezes. Steve smiles abashedly, and Bucky flushes. His face itches from Steve’s scratchy beard, is possibly red from the friction, but Bucky only cares for the continued chorus of ‘ _Steve Steve Steve’_ that his mind sings out. It pushes away all thought, the man before his eyes occupying everything inside him. Steve curls his hand around Bucky’s sweater, pulling him forward into another kiss, trying to get him even closer.

There isn’t any closer to go, the only thing between them layers of clothes the chunkiness of which Bucky quickly regrets, and the constricting tightness in their pants that promises of more. Steve slides his hands beneath Bucky’s sweater, making him shiver. He wants Steve’s touch all over him, wants his own hands, his own _everything_ , all over Steve; prolonging that if there is an alternative is overwhelming. Bucky pulls back abruptly, shoving his hair out of his flushed face. He disentangles himself from Steve’s lap and stands, holding a hand out for Steve to follow. Steve takes it eagerly, fingers entwining with Bucky’s own in a gesture that is easy and comfortable. Bucky leads them upstairs into his bedroom, stopping each second step to plant pecks on Steve’s cheekbones and nose.

They land on the bed with a thud, kisses turning frantic, uncoordinated, as their hands find their way underneath clothes. There could be consequences after this, explanations, possibly unpleasant clarifications and discussions, because Steve is not leaving tomorrow and this is not truly a moment encapsulated in a vacuum, separate from the reality of the mundane. But it is overpowering, exhilarating, and Bucky cannot stop to think, cannot draw away, not when Steve’s hands are on him, not when his lips trace lines along the veins on Bucky’s neck. An intoxicated moan escapes Bucky’s throat, hips arching forward to meet Steve’s body. Steve curses softly and then chuckles at himself, his breath hot and wet against Bucky’s clavicle.

Emboldened by the hard bulge pressing against his thigh as Steve shifts, Bucky pries Steve’s cardigan off with hurried fingers. Steve tries to straddle Bucky, kiss him and remove his own clothes all at once. He huffs, frustrated at the impossibility of his attempt, and yanks his t-shirt off, diving in to get a taste of Bucky’s lips. Bucky caresses solid smooth muscles, flesh and metal fingers digging into strong arms.

Steve pulls off Bucky’s sweater. His eyes shine as he gazes at Bucky, disheveled and dazed as he is. Bucky’s lips are numb, but he craves more. He springs forward, hand cupping the back of Steve’s neck as he draws him into another kiss. Steve moves his hands to lower regions, undoing buckles and belts blindly, expertly, as he trails kisses over lines where metal meets scarred flesh. Bucky discards what little clothing remains. In a mutually accepted panting pause, they take each other in, eyes roaming over parts they’ve yet to explore, drinking in all this new territory that temporarily belongs only to each other.

Bucky breaks the unspoken cessation first. He is, after all, merely human, and Steve is irresistible and tastes divine. His hair is tousled, his cheeks and neck flushed, his eyes glassy and vulnerable. He’s ready to explore and be explored, and Bucky wants to devour every inch of him until they meld together, until they’re in each other, fragments of each other’s fabric of existence. Every lick, every touch, every thrust feels impossibly good. Soft moans escalate under the storm that keeps on raging; movement picks up. Every muscle and nerve in Bucky warms up and tingles, is light and tight and hard and every sensation between. He gasps and breathes out Steve’s name, his body writhing and his legs twitching. He can barely draw in air as Steve reaches his own climax and curses against Bucky’s neck, jerking with the ferocity of his shudders.

Bucky disregards the messiness and pulls Steve close, taking his swollen lips into a loopy kiss, tangling his barely controllable limbs around Steve’s body. Steve mumbles something but it’s incoherent, the words dragging against Bucky’s arm.

Bucky, eyes half-lidded and energy spent, runs loose fingers through Steve’s hair. “What?”

“I said, I like you,” Steve mutters, halfway into falling in a doze.

Bucky scratches Steve’s head, his heart fluttering, his soul seeping with warmth. It’s sappy to say it, too honest, nearly childish, but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t respond. “I like you too, Stevie.”

Steve hums and wriggles closer. Shifting, he nudges at Bucky to get under the covers; they lay together, lulled to sleep by the incessant rain.


	4. Chapter 4

A rainy morning dawns, gray clouds blocking the sun, drizzle still beating tirelessly against the tiles. Bucky wakes to the rustling of the sheets. Steve smiles at him abashedly as he tries to creep out of bed. Bucky is too groggy to interpret this as anything more complicated than it is, forgoing speculations of the ‘Is he trying to act like nothing happened’ persuasion for the Occam’s razor version of ‘He’s just getting up from bed.’ He watches Steve through half-lidded eyes, cheek mushed against the pillow, his muscles still sore from last night’s exertions.

Steve bends to plant a scruffy peck on Bucky’s brow. “Gonna shower.”

“Gonna,” Bucky mumbles. He lets out a small sigh when Steve leaves the room, opting for a shower in his own bathroom.

Bucky groans and pushes himself off of the bed, lest he dozes off. He drags himself to his own tub and takes what might be his fastest shower in his civilian life, dragging on clothes still-half asleep and willing coffee to magically appear in a hot mug between his hands.

Coffee does no such thing. Thus, Bucky trudges to the kitchen mostly on autopilot, turning the coffee machine on, turning the TV on on mute, turning the radio on for Steve’s police friends, taking mugs off of the rack, spoons for the sugar. He leans against the counter and folds his arms, listening to the murmuring exchanges of Police Officer Bob and Dispatch Control Jim, hard at work with half the town flooded in the heavy rain. Apparently the local nursery is flooded, as are several homes and establishments, basements turned into wrecks. Slowly but surely, anxiety crawls in and makes Bucky’s hair stand on end. He clears his throat, acutely aware that _his_ – well, not-his – basement could very well be flooded. Fish or beavers could be roaming in it and he’d never know, rarely having reason to descend to it.

He sighs, aware that there’s only one way to alleviate that particular stress; a way that will take less than a minute.

Down to the basement Bucky goes.

Or – somewhat so. He only makes it to the middle of the stairs.

The basement _is_ flooded.

Bucky sucks in a gasp, eyes widening at the morose sight before him. Granted, it isn’t that bad compared to Police Officer Bob’s and Dispatch Control Jim’s accounts, but it’s enough to splash into; it’s enough to have soaked most if not all the cardboard boxes storing household items that Bucky hopes to God aren’t papers or items prone to mould. The rain keeps coming, even if quietly so, and Bucky feels that he is a terrible, _terrible_ house-sitter.

“Steve?” he calls, hoping his voice carries upstairs. At the lack of reply in the next admittedly short two seconds, he takes a step up and shouts, tone verging on panicky, “ _Steve_!”

The stampede down the stairs is at least somewhat soothing, even if Bucky winces on behalf of the wooden steps. He hurts for the house now as if it were a living, breathing thing and Bucky shares its feelings.

Steve’s hand is on the small of Bucky’s back before Bucky consciously registers that Steve arrives.

“Hey, what – Oh.” Steve halters, staring at the chaos in the basement. “Huh.”

Bucky shakes his head, rubbing away a stress headache that’s fast approaching. “Why the hell didn’t I think of that? Why didn’t I think of checking sooner, why–”

“I can think of a few reasons,” Steve says with a sly crooked smile.

Bucky glares at him ferociously.

Steve pats his back and takes a few steps downwards to inspect the mess up close. “I don’t see any cracks in the walls,” he says. “Could be those two windows.”

“They’re shut,” Bucky says sullenly.

“They might be leaking,” Steve says, peering at them, wisely not trekking the flooded floor yet. Bucky would probably throw a fit, given the mess Steve would bring with him coming back.

“I’ll call Delilah and Oscar. The owners,” Bucky clarifies dejectedly.

“I’d call a plumber,” Steve remarks.

Bucky rolls his eyes. “I have to let them know. Damn it, the whole town’s flooded, where the hell will I get a plumber,” he mumbles, stalking to the kitchen to retrieve his phone.

Fortunately, wondrously, thank-the-fuck, Delilah’s reaction is just ‘Oh, that sucks, but it’s not really your fault, no worries!’ She merely asks that Bucky transfers the items that can be saved into dry boxes, and that’s the end of that; no tears cried, no precious family heirlooms from the year ’39 destroyed, no legal papers lost.

Steve arches an eyebrow when Bucky shares these thoughts. “What?”

“Shut up,” Bucky mumbles.

Accepting with a heaving sigh that the temporary dryness of some clothes and the flooring will have to be sacrificed, Bucky nudges Steve down to the basement, with a mission to rescue the most belongings possible, then dry out the space. Bucky restlessly calls the two town plumbers, alternating between them in regular intervals, but they either don’t pick up or the line is busy.

“Goddamn,” he mutters after the sixth try, gnawing on his lip as he opens a box that proves to house Christmas ornaments. Most of them glisten with rainwater speckled with glitter.

Steve kisses Bucky’s hair as he gets to his feet, a bunch of miserable-looking plushies in his arms.

“Living room,” Bucky instructs absently, although the instruction might as well mean nothing; soon the entire house will be covered with items that need to dry out. The weather keeps on being patently unhelpful, the drizzle ever constant in the gloomy sky.

Finally, _finally_ a plumber picks up. Bucky fights between exasperation and understanding that the plumber does not consider this a top priority, flooded houses taking precedent. Plus, Bucky is an outsider and has made no actual attempt to blend in or go out of his way to be friendly – _or_ unfriendly – to the townsfolk; naturally, he’s not anyone’s favorite. They strike a deal, the plumber promising to drop by to check the damage and then proceed accordingly.

Bucky hums, satisfied, when he hangs up the phone.

“I’ll hear the car when he comes up, I’ll hide upstairs,” Steve says.

Bucky nods, watching Steve open a box and take out a porcelain doll, one eye missing and a crack running down her rosy-cheeked face. “Hey, these are the haunted dolls,” he says, scooting closer, feet soaked through his shoes and socks. “I told you about them–”

“Yeah, abandoned on the porch.” Steve turns the doll in his hands with a perplexed look. He passes it to Bucky and examines a second and a third one, both in equally bad states, cracks in their porcelain bodies, rips and dirt in their clothes and knotted hair. “They’re the definition of ‘ _This should be haunted’.”_ He looks at Bucky, his gaze set. “I think they should go on the stairs.”

“The _upstairs_?” Bucky asks, startled.

“One on every step, live there until they can come back down again,” Steve says.

“That is probably the creepiest place you could even–”

“One on every step,” Steve repeats.

Bucky frowns. “That’s terrible.”

“I hope their eyes shine in the dark,” Steve says almost dreamily.

“Jesus.” Bucky grabs the two dolls from Steve’s hands and moves to stand. He stops mid-motion when Steve’s fingers gently close around his wrist. Steve kisses Bucky’s knuckles, his focus on the box he works on, the gesture so reflexive that it’s downright adorable. Maybe a little heartbreaking too, if Bucky thinks about it, if he considers how this is probably as temporary as the dissolution of the Accords allows; but whatever _this_ is, it’s too new and raw to deal with it in terms of any permanence. For now, it’s bliss; it’s soft and simple, and fills Bucky’s soul with the soul-equivalent of unicorns shooting rainbow sparkles off their horns. He’ll take it. He’ll more than take it. He’ll cling to it for sanity, he’ll bask in it in the in-between moments of life, he’ll cherish it in idle hours, in high hours, in low hours; in all hours.

The plumber comes mid-afternoon, a rumbling man called Joseph. Nothing downstairs betrays that a second person lives in the house. Luckily, Joseph seems as content to refrain from small talk and get to the heart of the matter as Bucky is, so the affair turns out painless. The basement windows are the culprit – and from the spite in Joseph’s tone and eyes as he talks about them, they might as well have done him an outrageous personal wrong. ‘They’re _wrong’_ , he says, ‘they’re leaky, they’re loose, they’re _wrong-wrong-all wrong_ and need to be replaced’; but they aren’t an emergency, and the town’s full of emergencies as it is, so this will have to wait. Earnestly promising to call as soon as possible, Joseph departs, and Steve comes bouncing down the stairs. He takes care not to knock over any dolls, squeezes Bucky’s shoulder and plants a kiss against his hair – a mannerism of Steve’s, Bucky realizes as their day unfolds in a state of ‘togetherness’. Steve does not go for excessive make-out sessions, but pecks Bucky as if the gesture is as natural as breathing, as though they’ve skipped the awkwardness and have fast-forwarded to the comfortable part of that ‘ _together’_.

It’s dangerously fulfilling and unavoidably endearing.

It takes a week for the drizzle to stop, for the clouds to part and give the sun space. Steve stuffs the edges of the basement windows with towels to minimize leaking, a technique he employed when growing up. Bucky cuts his visits downtown to one during the entirety of that week, the hassle of trudging through mud and rainwater and bringing all that dirt back into the house not worth it. Steve declares himself in charge of mopping up the muddy footprints when they do occur, although his chore isn’t that hard. There isn’t much floor space not covered with basement items waiting to be stored into new boxes, from clothes and yarn and curtains to bobbles and books – most of which miraculously survived. Joseph does keep his word and replaces the _wrong-wrong-all wrong_ windows with new, sturdy ones, humming what sound to be jazz songs as he works. Bucky gets intimately familiar with his repertoire. He’d love to get busy with something else, anything other than standing guard over a man as he works, but he is not the kind of person to not be vigilant, just in the very rarest of cases that something amiss happens. Joseph is utterly indifferent to this and wholly ignores him, which Bucky appreciates with his entire heart.

It’s a quiet week, mostly because the endless rain brings about a sense of lethargy. It’s a week of watching movies in bed, of sleeping in late; of discovering just how hard it is to get paint out of someone’s long hair when someone else’s paint-stained fingers end up tangled in said hair; how easy it is to get distracted by a kiss that turns to more that turns to idle snuggling, and the same kind of meaningless-meaningful chatter that Steve and Bucky have picked up for months now. It’s a week of rain that allows Steve and Bucky to settle into this new kind of relationship, to adjust to what little needs to be adjusted to – mainly to the part that now anything goes, that nothing needs to be held back.

It’s a freeing thing to adjust to.

~

Bucky stumbles inside the kitchen, scrubbing sleep out of his eyes, lips twisted with vexation at the general idea of mornings. Steve, already up and perky enough to function, is peering in the fridge, dubious frown lines illuminated and deepened by its cold light. He grabs milk, closes the fridge door, pecks Bucky’s cheek and sets the carton on the counter, his uncertain frown getting more intense. Bucky fills a mug with hot coffee, cradling this elixir of life between his sweater paws and pressing himself against the counter to make way for restlessly restless Steve, who bounds around the kitchen on a mission – though of what nature is currently unclear. He opens the fridge door again, assessing its contents with a blank look. He dismisses them and takes to the cupboards, fetching flour and sugar.

“What’s happening,” Bucky mutters.

“’M making breakfast,” Steve announces, picking up plates and bowls.

Bucky leans against the counter, eyes narrowed. “Since when?”

Steve stops for long enough to give Bucky a long, pointed look. “You act like you don’t keep me at a distance from all things cooking.”

“Don’t like my odds if I don’t,” Bucky counters.

Still, it’s too early to argue or take over. Bucky sits back and watches the process. He does not interfere, genuinely curious about Steve’s solo outcome, aware that there’s zero percent chance of Steve asking for help.

“Did you look up the recipe, or…” Bucky trails off, sipping his coffee.

“Several,” Steve mumbles, mixing ingredients with the determination of someone piecing together a puzzle of the sea in its various colors. “’S pancakes.”

Bucky hums dubiously. “We’ll see.”

Merely one pancake of Steve’s ambitious batter turns out semi-edible, although even that is a stretch. Allegedly a second one is on the consumable side too, or so Steve claims. Bucky suspects Steve eats it purely out of spite and discreetly washes down the taste with a cup of coffee that he gulps down in three sips.

“What?” Steve asks defiantly.

Bucky sighs and discards the inedible cooked dough. Steve pours milk and cereal into bowls for a simpler breakfast, somewhat abashedly, considering his lack of smartassery.

“How are you so bad at this?” Bucky marvels.

Steve makes an injured sound low in his throat. It’d be easier for Bucky to feel bad about it if Steve hadn’t just concocted the saltiest pancake mix in existence after reportedly explicitly not adding salt, in insubordination to the recipes that asked for half teaspoons.

“You are,” Bucky asserts.

Steve recovers quickly from his emotional injury and arches an eyebrow, cocky as he takes the bowls to the table. “I’m good at other things.”

Bucky is not taking that bait. “Yes,” he says flatly. “So many other things. Sketching,” he lists, wiping spilled milk off the counter. “Painting.”

Steve slips behind Bucky and wraps his arms around his waist. “Other things.”

“Don’t say it,” Bucky gripes.

Steve leans in close. “Want me show it?” he breathes in Bucky’s ear with a grin.

Bucky groans. “That’s too cheesy, Steve, I won’t allow it.”

Steve leaves a light bite on Bucky’s shoulder. His playfulness and high energy should be illegal this early in the morning, should be forbidden at least before a second cup of coffee, should be reprimanded–

Bucky squishes Steve’s face and smooches the grin off of his lips. Naturally, this only makes Steve grin harder.

Bucky disentangles himself, gives a light smack to Steve’s thigh and takes a seat to get the breakfast going. “I’m gonna get the boxes today,” he says as Steve takes his own seat. He points at the radio with his spoon. “Bob and Jim said it’s fair weather for the next few days, so we’re getting the stuff back into the basement.”

“Aw, I’ll miss the dolls,” Steve says. “Can we keep them?”

Bucky lowers his eyebrows. “No. You can go play with them at your leisure,” he adds magnanimously. “But no séances.”

Steve grins. “I would never. Could you get some pop tarts and tater tots from downtown?”

“Sure, make me a list,” Bucky replies.

“And some blue paint? The 091 one–”

“Make me a list,” Bucky repeats.

“Hello, boys,” a third, female voice joins them. Its owner slips into the kitchen like a wraith, heart-attack-silently and horror-movie-creepily, red hair gathered in a braid, leather jacket gleaming in the sunlight.

Bucky jumps. Again. Second time in a row at her appearance, this pesky ninja one-upping him once more. “Jesus _fucking Christ,_ what the hell!” he exclaims, spoon clattering against the bowl, successfully mirroring their first and not wholly pleasant encounter.

Steve smirks. “Natasha.”

Natasha smirks back at him, all smugness and sass. She takes a seat on the table, eyeing the breakfast and finding it lacking, her lips quirking downward in a disapproving scowl. “How’ve you been faring?”

“All has been well,” Steve replies with mock ceremony.

Natasha’s face cracks into a smile, her eyes twinkling. “Bold statement coming from you.”

Steve cocks his head and grins. Natasha mimics him.

Bucky clears his throat. “Anything you need? A drink, some food, a ride to literally any other place on earth?”

Natasha’s grin widens as she turns to Bucky. “You’re not so bad. I don’t mind staying a bit.”

Bucky nods, lips twisting in a pained grimace. “Right. Good. So happy.”

Steve nudges Bucky’s hand. “Play nice.” He turns to Natasha, amused. “Play nice.”

“Are you a bearer of good news?” Bucky asks, though what is ‘good’ at this point is slightly and very biasedly debatable.

“We’re getting closer to finding a way to break off the Accords,” Natasha tells Steve. “There’s pressure for private trials after though. We’d need to build a strong defense.”

“Not quite earth-shattering news,” Steve remarks.

“No, but it’s progress. And I wanted to check on you in person,” Natasha adds, her tone softer. “I know it’s hard for you to stay put. But things are going well, relatively speaking, and this is your one mission for now.”

“But who–” Steve lets out a slow exhale, propping his elbows on the table with a thud – “who takes care of the things that need taking care of? The things the Accords won’t let you meddle in?”

“The others are also staying put,” Natasha replies.

Steve stares at her, unimpressed. “That’s not answering my question.”

Natasha opens her mouth and settles into a remorseful smile. “Let’s just say the powers that be are just now realizing how much harder and more tedious some things are without the Avengers interfering or sharing information, because we are sadly not allowed to – as you said – meddle.”

“But _who_ benefits from that?” Steve insists.

“In the long run?”

Steve shakes his head. “Now.”

“It’s politics, Steve,” Natasha says, almost weary.

“Who’s gonna do damage control?” Steve persists.

“Us, probably, once the deal is off,” Natasha replies with a fed-up sigh. “You gonna offer me some coffee?” she asks Bucky.

“ _Uh oh, looks like they changed their minds. Might rain later today after all_ ,” Police Officer Bob’s voice crackles on the radio.

“ _Well, get out of that damn car and soak in the sunlight while you can_ , _before there’s any criminals that need busting_ _or something_ ,” Dispatch Control Jim encourages.

Police Officer Bob laughs; criminals that need busting are a rare occurrence ‘round these parts.

Steve ducks his head and studiously studies the table, avoiding Natasha’s sharp gaze. He misses out on her intimidating posture, which is quite a formidable thing to experience when not directed against one’s own person. Steve is just short of whistling an indifferent tune, or bolting. Bucky discreetly slides to the coffee machine to get Natasha’s coffee, in what seems to be the safest course of action.

“That sounds an awful lot like police radio, Steve,” Natasha comments, her tone deceptively mild.

“Signals must have gotten mixed,” Steve suggests equally mildly.

Bucky wants to linger and witness this proverbial or maybe even literal slaughter, but possible rain later means he needs to head downtown now. He suppresses a sigh and pours coffee into Natasha’s mug. “Milk, sugar, cream?”

“Two sugars, thanks. I do hate it when I’m listening to Katy Perry and then all of a sudden I get an NYPD mixed-signals report. I feel you,” she tells Steve dryly.

Steve shrugs, the gesture too slow to not look completely artificial, fingers toying with a macramé cord to his side. “It’s annoying.”

Natasha props her forearms on the table, down to business. “Steve.”

Bucky sets her coffee on the table. “Before you begin, I’ll need that list. I have to run errands,” he tells Steve.

“ _Ooh, churros,_ ” Dispatch Control Jim croons on the radio.

“ _What, save me some! I’m gonna drive past the station in a bit!_ ” Police Officer Bob says.

Steve rubs his face with a sigh. “Yeah, yes,” he says tiredly, getting to his feet. “The list.”

When Bucky returns, much later than he had anticipated, having made his post office and shops runs, Natasha is still here, her coffee mug empty, the coffee machine refilled and the breakfast bowls washed and dried. She watches Bucky as he sets down groceries, her gaze tracing his every move as he pops in and out bringing in things from the truck. She watches him unpack the groceries in silence, Steve equally quiet and somewhat sly at her side. Things between them seem neutral if not peaceful; the radio still appears functional, and no knives are scattered around the kitchen. Bucky counts this as a win for Steve.

Bucky sets what’s meant to be lunch on the counter and turns to Natasha. “You’re staring.”

“Yes,” Natasha affirms.

Steve shakes his head with a fond smile.

“I hate this thing,” Natasha tells Bucky, tilting her head at the radio.

“With you on that one,” Bucky agrees.

“Because no one here needs to be getting ideas about jumping into action and risking being seen, or worse,” Natasha says.

“Natasha,” Steve warns patiently.

“Couldn’t agree more,” Bucky replies.

Natasha nods approvingly. Bucky’s hair rises on edge, their momentary alliance almost unholy.

“In a reprise of our first lovely encounter,” Bucky says, picking up a carrot and pointing at Natasha with it, “will you be staying for lunch?”

Natasha smiles, getting to her feet. “In a reprise of our first lovely encounter, I won’t,” she says. She holds her arms open for Steve. “Don’t be an idiot,” she advises, as Steve stands up to wrap his arms around her in a tight embrace.

“Tall order!” Bucky calls at Natasha’s back as she leaves, earning himself a chuckle. “Is she really gone?” he asks after a moment. “She could be lurking upstairs and I’d never know.”

Steve laughs lightly and slides to the sink, diligently washing the vegetables that Bucky hands him.

“That a habit?” Bucky asks.

Steve turns to him. “Hmm?”

“Her dropping by unannounced?”

Steve snorts out a chuckle, but offers no reply, which isn’t exactly comforting.

“Not that I don’t enjoy being gawked at and scrutinized in my own kitchen,” Bucky snarks.

“We’ve known each other for a long time,” Steve says at length, when Bucky’s already started chopping up his carrots. “Been through a lot – and I don’t mean just business,” he adds. “Holidays, and nights when we pretended to get drunk by sheer power of will. Writing crappy songs for Sam’s birthday just to make him listen to six minutes of off-key live singing accompanied by badly played instruments.”

Bucky raises his eyebrows.

“Celebrations, parties, deaths, mourning,” Steve continues. “House-sitting Clint’s cattle for a spell.”

“Damn,” Bucky remarks.

“And during those years, she’s tried to set me up on many dates, one of which I even agreed to,” Steve says.

“And?” Bucky asks conversationally, attention on cutting the carrots.

“Didn’t stick,” Steve says. “Now there’s you. And so she stared.”

Bucky nearly snips a finger off – or would, if it weren’t metal. He refrains from shrieking that Steve talked about _them_ to a friend, or from asking the much-dreaded question of ‘What are we?’ “Dissecting me, so to speak?” he says dryly.

Steve pecks the side of Bucky’s neck. “Admiring.”

~

Steve looks positively mournful when the dolls are taken off their perches on the staircase and stored in a box. He handles every single one of them lovingly, gaze lingering on the one that’s come to be his favorite, as the cracks on her face light up golden when the sunlight or moonlight hit them just so. They store the dry items in new boxes and carry them into the basement. Settling cross-legged among them, they take turns labelling the boxes and securing them with tape.

“And the family will never know,” Bucky says dramatically, “that they basically have autographed boxes from Captain America.”

“No pressure to tidy up my handwriting,” Steve says flatly.

Bucky clicks his tongue. “Please, it’s almost cursive.”

Steve drags the next box close, peering in. He takes out a snow globe housing a tiny Las Vegas. “Souvenirs?” he suggests for the label.

“Sure,” Bucky says, busy taping a box of curtains.

Steve rummages through the items. He pulls out a huge hat, glittering green with a somewhat chafed brim, proclaiming _Kiss me, I’m Irish_. He holds it up, presenting it to Bucky. Bucky snorts.

Steve wiggles the hat impatiently. “I’m Irish.”

“You’re–” Bucky blinks, vaguely remembering his history books. “Ah,” he complies.

“We’re definitely going to Ireland,” Steve says, putting the hat back in the box as Bucky kisses the side of Steve’s head.

“On our world tour?” Bucky asks mildly, his tone belying the giddy flutter of his heart.

Steve nods. “And I’m definitely getting a hat. And every time I wear it–”

“I’m going to completely ignore you ‘cause you’ll look like a leprechaun,” Bucky supplies.

Steve’s eyebrows shoot up into his hairline. “This coming from the man with the unicorn hoodie, and the bunny hoodie, and–”

“It’s a unicorn _beanie_ , thank you,” Bucky interjects, “and the _sentimental value_ –”

“Mine’s got sentimental value,” Steve retorts stubbornly.

“You haven’t even bought it yet. We’re not even in Ireland yet!” Bucky exclaims, eyes wide and incredulous.

“You’re just mad that you’ll have competition in the novelty clothes department,” Steve says.

Bucky rolls his eyes. “I’ll get you the damn hat myself if it gets you to stop talking.”

Steve grins. Bucky isn’t quite sure if the victory is over the hat itself or for riling Bucky up in the first place.

“In fact,” Bucky continues, “I’ll get you a whole damn leprechaun costume. Should be fine, you’ve worn worse.”

Steve narrows his eyes, lips twitching with the hint of a smile. “You know damn well I’ll put it on, and proudly so.”

“I’m counting on it,” Bucky replies. “I’m looking forward to the online reactions when the pictures go viral.”

Steve half-huffs, half-snorts, and half-kicks out at Bucky’s foot. He full-leans to Bucky and draws him in a kiss, effectively shutting them up both. It’s a good compromise, really.

~

Bucky is a good person if he does say so himself – or at the very least he is a good person when it comes to Steve. When mornings come knocking, he never wakes Steve up if Steve isn’t already awake, and he makes the least amount of noise possible to let him sleep, tiptoeing around whichever bedroom they’d shared the night before to get dressed and get the coffee going.

Steve, on the other hand, is a jerk, albeit a lovable one, who always nudges Bucky awake when _he_ , Steve, wakes up first, sometimes with unsubtle pokes, sometimes with gentler pecks and light caresses. Then there’s the other times, when Steve blatantly climbs onto Bucky, straddling him like an octopus – and Steve is a force of nature, so there’s not much chance of sleeping through _that_. Bucky tends to groan, complain half-heartedly and swat Steve away, making him grin. Steve tends to settle half on the bed and half on Bucky himself as if the mattress isn’t wide enough to accommodate them both. He snuggles up to Bucky, buries his nose in Bucky’s hair and hums contentedly, a sound Bucky is pretty sure Steve isn’t entirely aware that he’s producing. It’s right about then that Bucky stops grumbling and starts internally purring, because yes, Steve can definitely stay there, squishing Bucky between Steve-parts and bed-parts. It’s nice. Bucky nestles him closer.

The mornings boil down to that, but the nights contain a little more variety, not necessarily of the good kind. Sometimes it’s ‘anything goes’ nights, from movies, to discussions, to silly games of the ‘never have I ever’ kind that leave Bucky pleasantly tipsy and Steve laughing at Bucky’s giggling and unsteady steps. Sometimes it’s the dreaded enigma of who will wake up due to a nightmare first – Steve, who claims he never can remember or articulate his nightmares, but kicks out an awful lot until he wakes, or Bucky, who scrambles like a man running out of oxygen to turn the light on, shaking like a jellyfish in that single petrified second of not knowing what might be lurking in the darkness. Nights can be other things, too, from filled with lust and senseless passion, to pure sweetness.

On nights like these, nights like tonight, when Steve is halfway towards falling asleep and curled around Bucky with everything he’s got, his leg locked over Bucky’s legs, his arm wrapped over Bucky’s waist, his head mushed against Bucky’s chest, Bucky feels he might as well be dealing with that small boy whose pictures he’s dredged up on the internet; grainy sepia-toned images that radiate the same amount of stubbornness and kindness that Steve exudes in person. When Steve is half-asleep like this, his mind gets foggy on the size discrepancy.

Bucky passes his hand through Steve’s hair and pulls him closer, kissing the top of his head. Heaviness settles in his lungs, a heaviness that for once he can’t push away, not in the silence of the darkness, not in the heat of their proximity; not with the familiar weight of Steve resting so tightly against him. It’s wonderful, all of it is, but it’s achingly temporary.

Bucky does not realize he sighs, nor that he is practically clutching at Steve’s hair as though keeping him from disappearing in a puff of air. At least not until Steve raises his head a little, his eyes bleary, and asks, “What?”

Bucky starts, unclutching his fingers from Steve’s hair. “What?”

Steve narrows his eyes and pulls back to prop himself up on his elbow. “What’s wrong?”

“I – uh.” Bucky bites the inside of his lower cheek, willing – _begging_ himself not to say it, and yet – “It’s borrowed time, isn’t it.” It’s not a question. Maybe an honest question would be too daunting.

Steve blinks, nonplussed. “What?”

Bucky shakes his head, raising his hand to rub his eyes. “Sorry,” he mutters. “Sorry, I’m sorry, that’s – go back to sleep.” He demonstrates his point by gently pushing Steve’s head toward the pillow, or Bucky’s own chest, or anywhere that he won’t have to deal with Bucky’s unwarranted concerns.

Steve shakes Bucky’s hand off like a wet poodle trying to get dry. “What’s going on?”

Bucky runs his hand over his face and inhales deeply. “It’s borrowed time,” he repeats. “This. Us.” He doesn’t mean to sound so morose. He doesn’t mean to sound so bereaved about it, doesn’t mean to twist his lips like some kind of abandoned kitten pounded on by heavy rain. He doesn’t mean to stir up drama, _goddammit_ –

Steve seems to pale under the notion, eyes flinching as his jaw clenches tight. “I don’t want it to be,” he says stiffly. “I know–” He clears his throat. “I know it’s hard, but I want you to know that – I _need_ you to know that I’ll fight for it. For this,” he asserts, his eyes shining. “If you let me.”

Bucky lets out a harsh laugh, releasing with it his pent-up trepidation, filling up the empty space with cautious hope. “I’ll be with you in the trenches, pal,” he says hoarsely.

Steve stares at him for a long moment, his muscles visibly relaxing, his tautness softening.

“Don’t go pulling ranks on me though,” Bucky teases half-heartedly.

Steve rolls his eyes. “I’m not making any promises.”


	5. Chapter 5

Orbs bob gently up and down on the camera screen. Some kind of animal that simultaneously hops, slithers and skulks around the front steps of the house, then looks up and skedaddles as though it’s seen a ghost. _Star Wars_ is playing on mute on the TV, the laptop croons out songs on low volume, and Bucky knots yet another knot in his new creation, a wannabe tablecloth currently the size of a towel. Steve leans comfortably back into his chair, fingers absently twirling his hair as he reads a book borrowed from the family library. It proclaims itself to be called _The Wonders of the Land of Peril_ , which is either too joyful to connote threat, or too threatening to connote joy. The colorful front page sporting grotesque shapes of things and beings doesn’t do the conundrum any favors.

“ _You bored, boys?_ ”

“I’m busy,” Bucky replies to the crackle of the police radio. At the same time, Steve shifts and declares, “A little.”

Bucky raises his eyebrows.

“Takes a while for the pace to pick up,” Steve says, indicating the book.

“ _Played our just about a millionth and eleventh game of I-Spy, but no, sure, we’re fine_ ,” Police Officer Marty replies. Police officer Dave does not chime in.

“ _There’s trouble brewing in The Rosebud Mansion possibly, so you might wanna check that out_ ,” Dispatch Control Chrissie says in her rough voice. “ _And by ‘wanna’, I mean get your asses up there, they sound concerned._ ”

“ _Rosebud Mansion, is that even our jurisdiction?_ ” Police Officer Dave asks.

“ _It ain’t_ ,” Police Officer Marty replies.

“ _It ain’t, but they are kinda concerned, and by ‘kinda’ I mean lots_ ,” Dispatch Control Chrissie says. “ _They’re heading there to check it out and kindly asked for information, backup or funeral arrangements_.”

Steve shoots a pointed look at Bucky. Bucky very pointedly ignores him.

“ _What’s up?_ ” Police Officer Marty asks.

“ _Are you going?_ ” Dispatch Control Chrissie snaps.

“ _We’re going, we’re going!_ ”

“ _There’s reports of glowy blue sticks and shit_ ,” Dispatch Control Chrissie says. “ _Laser things, weird lights on the sky. People got nervous, no one’s been in that place for years_.”

Steve goes eerily still. Bucky shifts and doubles up the speed of his knotting.

“ _Could be just them kids wreaking havoc. It’d be just like them kids_ ,” Police Officer Dave says.

“ _Could be, could be them damn aliens_ ,” Dispatch Control Chrissie says.

“ _Bull, the big things only happen in the big cities_ ,” Police Officer Marty counters.

“ _It all sounds so shady_ ,” Dispatch Control Chrissie says. “ _There’s a strange black van and stuff. All they asked for is backup and vigilance as they check it out_.”

“ _It’s a long way to go just for tea and vigilance, Chris_ ,” Police Officer Marty says.

Steve absently drops the book on the table. The dull thump resounds like an ominously loud gong. Bucky slowly sets down the cords and squares his shoulders.

“Steve.”

Steve licks his lips, staring at the radio as though watching a show.

“Steve,” Bucky repeats evenly.

“Sounds like alien tech,” Steve blurts out quickly.

Bucky hears him. He understands the words, and more importantly, he understands the implications. He sees the argument unfold in milliseconds and dearly wants to delay or avoid it. He settles for a null and meaningless, “What?”

“People,” Steve begins, scooting forward to rest his elbows on the table, head ducked low and voice conspiratorial as if discussing battle plans, “have been scavenging parts of alien weapons, Hydra weapons, any high tech thing they come across. They repurpose them and they sell them. This–” he nods at the radio – “sounds like that, and they’re not…” He shakes his head. “They don’t sound equipped to handle that.”

“They could be kids,” Bucky retorts. “Police Officer Dave _said_ –”

“They wouldn’t mix up kids messing around with trouble of unknown origin, Buck,” Steve says. He’s composed, but his adrenaline is spiking. Bucky can feel it radiating off of him, buzzing and electric. He expects Steve to leap up any moment now, half-wondering why he hasn’t done so already.

“Steve,” Bucky says levelly. “Call someone.”

“ _Who_?” Steve snaps, raking his fingers through his hair. “Who can go? They’re hiding, or on house arrest, or they’ll have to fill out paperwork and get it stamped unless they want to operate illegally. None of them should risk it.”

“And _you_ should?” Bucky retorts.

Steve’s jaw clenches, his lips pinched. “I can deal with it.”

Bucky clicks his tongue impatiently.

“I’ll be quick,” Steve assures. “In and out.”

“In and out of _what_?” Bucky counters. “You don’t even know where–”

“I’ll knock them out cold,” Steve says, already pushing back his chair and getting up. “Mangle up their weapons, call it in–”

“There’s _people_ there,” Bucky says. “Blue-sticks people and police officers, they might see you, know it’s you–”

“I could be anywhere, could be heading anywhere, it doesn’t matter,” Steve says. “I’ll try to stay under the radar. If I’m late, I’ll be in hiding,” he adds earnestly; Bucky just about wants to smack him. “Just wait for me a little longer.”

Bucky swallows down a sigh. He’s seen this play out. He knows his lines. He gets to his feet. “Steve.”

Steve throws him an irreverent smile. “Don’t snitch on me.”

Bucky nods toward Steve’s cardigan, light-colored and chunky. “You should dress in black. And you could use backup yourself.” Steve looks genuinely confused. Bucky adds hurriedly, “Me. I mean myself.”

Steve shakes his head, agape. “I – no. No–”

“Yes,” Bucky says almost wearily, because he’s seen that play out too, and already knows the outcome. Few people can out-stubborn Steve, but Bucky is up there with the best of them. He walks past Steve toward the staircase and the bedroom. He, too, needs tactical clothing.

“This isn’t your battle,” Steve says, trailing behind him.

Bucky turns his head and rolls his eyes. “Don’t be dramatic. I’m coming with. I’ve got a gun – which is way more than _you_ have. Where’s that shield at, cool cat?” he asks, arching his eyebrows.

“Government property,” Steve bites out.

“You don’t even know where Rosebud Mansion _is_ ,” Bucky nags as he turns back to the stairs, Steve on his tail.

“I can’t ask you to do this.”

“Good thing you ain’t asking then,” Bucky brushes him off.

“You’d be risking–”

“I think the ship of what I’m risking sailed long ago,” Bucky says. He comes to a sudden halt and spins around, ignoring the way Steve bumps into him. “I’m coming,” he asserts, staring straight into Steve’s eyes. He nods his head toward the bedrooms and grabs Steve’s hand. “C’mon. Let’s dress for trouble.”

~

Bucky drives the family truck up to the nearest town to Rosebud Mansion, a good thirty minutes away given that he drives with the lights off and avoids the main roads. The sight is decidedly a hazard, especially because they’re _not_ a sight, the truck and its black clad passengers barely visible. Bucky spends the ride alternating between internal cursing and glib prayers to the powers that be that they don’t come across another vehicle or living creature, and marveling at what a horrible house-sitter he truly is, not only aiding and very much abetting a state fugitive, but using someone else’s house and truck to do so. Beside him, Steve, visibly calmer now that they’re on their way to the rescue – if that is what this turns out to be – cuts holes for eyes into two black beanies that Bucky will absolutely mourn later, but for now has to sacrifice for their excursion.

Bucky drives the truck into a thicket off the beaten path in the outskirts of the town, hidden from view under the trees and darkness. He cuts the engine, exhales loudly and turns to Steve.

“We’re gonna hike up there,” he says. “Can’t risk taking the truck and having anyone making connections.”

Steve nods, dropping the scissors on the car floor and passing a decimated beanie to Bucky.

“Right,” Bucky mumbles. He drags it on, adjusting it around his eyes as Steve does the same. The fabric is harsh against his skin, his cheeks aflame at its warmth. He shakes himself before he spirals into claustrophobia and looks at Steve. The beanie only reaches up under his nose, a tuft of blond beard popping out underneath. A pair of startlingly blue eyes stare out at Bucky, waiting for the go-ahead. “You look ridiculous,” Bucky says.

Steve grins and scrambles out of the truck. Bucky tucks his gun inside his waistband, locks the vehicle and leads the way.

Twenty more minutes are required to hike up to Rosebud Mansion at best, but in this case it takes a little longer, accounting for the stealth mode that Steve and Bucky attempt. They step through the woods with considerable care and even then they are not completely silent, as darkness doesn’t afford them the luxury of perfectly-silent-steps precision.

They reach the hill Rosebud Mansion stands on and simultaneously scamper behind the shadow of thick trees. A black van is indeed on site – two of them. Strange lantern-like lights glow dimly beyond. The mansion itself is locked up and quiet. A police car rests on the right, belonging to the nearest town. Two police officers lie unconscious to the side. Whatever this is, alien or not, it is definitely not kids and shenanigans.

Bucky shoots a furtive look at Steve. Steve leans closer to the tree bark and peers out at the vans. Shapes can be discerned in the darkness, the lights blinking or moving to and fro. Ideally, Bucky would have a rifle. Ideally he’d be perched up somewhere high, shooting criminals one by one, protecting Steve from a vantage point as Steve did the heavy lifting. As it is, they both have to approach. Bucky takes his gun out of his waistband and adjusts its grip in his hand, its weight and feel familiar. Memories brush through his mind, blurry and sharp at once, seconds-short moments of his time in the service, but Bucky is set on a state of getting-things-done, too present in the moment to let a past life overwhelm him.

It must show on his face, his determination, because Steve whispers, “No shooting to kill. No killings.”

Bucky unclenches his stiff jaw and loosens his shoulders. “Who do you take me for? Jesus,” he mumbles sourly. He cocks his gun, poised at the ready, effectively rendering his protest somewhat null.

The stealth attempt doesn’t work for more than two minutes. It’s a buy between weapons dealers, not quite tactically trained at combating an enhanced soldier, but dangerous in their fury at the distraction.

Steve makes his entrance with a somersault. Bucky is largely convinced it is for show, unless it’s Steve’s equivalent of a pep talk. He is, however, so boisterous in his theatrics that no one realizes quite on time how precise he is in every punch and kick, and no one sees Bucky skulking in the shadows until it’s too late and they’re already groaning on the ground, clutching non-lethal gunshot wounds. Steve grabs a gun off of a goon and breaks it in two against his knee, then takes care of its owner in swift seconds. He forgets to keep track of his six, and Bucky finds himself preoccupied with doing so, taking out people that come at Steve rather than taking out anyone before they’re trouble.

By the time anyone pays real attention to Bucky, the number of criminals still standing has thinned down to two. The person in question grabs a futuristic-looking gun off of a van and fires against Bucky, who lunges to avoid the singeing or possible disintegration. Bucky shoots at his assailant’s ankle, who howls, head thrown back as though calling at the moon. Steve finishes off the job with a quick punch to the man’s solar plexus and a sleeper hold. Bucky trips the last criminal while he focuses on Steve, elbowing his ribs and cutting off his air supply until he falls unconscious. It’s all familiar, akin to riding a bicycle, if the bicycle is a vicious, violent beast of a thing that when unleashed wreaks chaos and destruction, occasionally more of a war machine than an actual human. It’s a mindset that Bucky didn’t think he’d ever revisit, but he’d been in it for so long that none of it is unnerving. He knows this. This was once his life.

Bucky surveys the scene, ascertaining that everyone is down for the count. Steve struts toward the vans and breaks the futuristic guns one by one, their cracking loud in the heavy silence. Bucky, scratching his face at the itchy beanie, trots to the police officers and crouches over them to check their breathing. It reassuringly appears regular enough. He refrains from checking for a pulse, in the unlikely case that someone manages to discover incriminating fingerprints. He looks up at the sound of Steve’s footsteps.

“I’m done,” Steve says. For all his exertion and gymnastics, he’s sprightly and completely in control. “Let’s call it in.”

Bucky gets back to his feet. “We shouldn’t touch things.”

Steve rolls his eyes – a fair reaction; he’s already touched every person and weapon in the vicinity, hopefully without any significant amount of traces, though Bucky privately thinks this is too much to hope for. Still, he stands his ground through a stare-off to convey the urgency of his insistence, his shoulders set and his hands on his hips for good measure.

It _does_ convey the urgency of his insistence. Bucky didn’t expect that it would, or that Steve would succumb to it, but contrary to Bucky’s hopes, it makes things worse and heightens his heart rate up to heavens. Steve harrumphs quietly and in a swift gesture that Bucky can’t even begin to predict, pulls off his beanie, his face red and sweaty, his hair a mess of matted tufts and ends that stick up every possible and impossible way. Even the hairs of his eyebrows are distressed, but not quite as distressed as Bucky. He sucks in a gasp, agape as Steve ducks to the ground and fumbles for the nearest radio, his fingerprints secure behind the fabric of the beanie.

Fingerprints secured: check. Face in full-on view, _thanks very much Steve’s brain, thanks much_ : check.

“Are you insane?!” Bucky hisses, stepping in close to cast shadows over Steve’s features.

“Everyone’s down,” Steve mumbles, fiddling with the radio sourly, the beanie an inconvenience for the dexterity of his fingers.

“Jesus,” Bucky breathes through his teeth. He furtively checks every inch of space he can see in the near darkness while Steve rattles off orders, not leaving the police dispatcher any room to argue. He ignores her questions and chucks the radio on the ground once he’s done. The second he is back on his feet, Bucky grabs his arm and drags him furiously toward the shelter of the forest, hoping to God that his voice over the frequencies was distorted enough to deter recognition.

Steve goes along at Bucky’s speed without protest or resistance. Carried by adrenaline and haste, one hand around his gun, the other digging into Steve’s bicep, Bucky leads them deep into the woods, stealth-mode abandoned, branches crunching and leaves cracking under their steps. Too vigilant to stop, too eager to go back to the house and the safety behind its walls, Bucky only releases his grip once they reach the paved road, blessedly empty and devoid of streetlights. He stomps his way to the hidden truck without a word, wading through thickets to unlock it. He drops heavily onto the front seat, sets the gun down and savagely pulls off his beanie, rubbing and scratching at his skin. Steve slides into the passenger seat and quietly closes the door. Bucky rakes his hair away from his brow, every tuft that touches him an extra itch on his drenched face. He breathes in deeply, freely, basking in the lack of restrictive fabric around his head.

Once Bucky regains his composure, he side-eyes Steve, mouth downturned in a tight line. “You don’t watch your six.”

“I’ve been told,” Steve says mildly.

“But you decided to dismiss it?” Bucky snaps.

Steve grins.

Bucky narrows his eyes.

Steve _laughs_ , a short, resounding sound that fills the truck with warmth.

Bucky narrows his eyes more pointedly. “Someone hit you on the head, or…”

Steve lunges forward and curls his hand around Bucky’s neck. He draws him into a pressing kiss, tongue urgently slipping inside Bucky’s mouth, his lips pulling at Bucky’s lips. Bucky’s back arches as he surrenders to Steve’s heat. He grips Steve’s thigh, carelessly giving in to the moment, metal fingers trailing a path over Steve’s pec–

Bucky’s brain ends its intermission. Bucky jolts into the present, remembering where they are and what they are doing. He disentangles gently, setting his hands stiffly on his lap. Steve beams at him, flushed, thrilled and radiant, a sight to behold in the unexpected mess of the night.

“What’s gotten into you,” Bucky mumbles softly.

Steve shakes his head. “Sorry, I just–”

“Don’t be sorry,” Bucky interjects, pushing the key in the ignition. The truck comes to life with a quiet groan.

“You’re good at this,” Steve says as Bucky puts the truck in reverse, hoping his estimations are enough to get back to the road without turning on any headlights.

“What, driving?” Bucky asks distractedly. “Kissing? Fighting?”

Steve’s lips twitch into a smile. “A triple threat.”

“I do my best,” Bucky quips mildly. “You’re not that bad yourself,” he adds once he gets the car onto concrete road.

Steve snorts out. “So generous.”

“I especially admire that thing you do,” Bucky says, driving as fast as he can on a dark road, “where you throw all tactics to the wind, just smash against people tank-like and hope for the best.”

Steve barks out a laugh. Maybe he’s high on adrenaline himself, or maybe he released some of his months’ worth of pent up energy in the fight. Maybe he’s just exhilarated to be anywhere that isn’t the confines of not-Bucky’s property, or settled into a part of him that he was missing this night, actively taking action instead of twiddling his thumbs. Either way, it suits him, his cheeks glowing, his eyes sparkling with purpose and confidence, with a conviction that almost persuades Bucky that all is right.

Almost.

Halfway back to the house, company appears. Steve spots the incoming car first. He slides down his seat in a heap that a contortionist would scoff at as he whispers, “Turn on the headlights.”

Bucky complies, though this cannot possibly make things any better. Headlights appearing out of nowhere surely points to headlights not being on as they should have been a second ago. The vehicle approaching is a police car, driven by a lone police officer. It’s a little too late, considering the call for help was made over an hour ago, or maybe it’s more backup, and if so Rosebud’s police station must be awfully short-staffed. Either way, the police officer glances at Bucky as he passes aside. Bucky glances back brazenly, trying to vibrate on a ‘I have absolutely nothing to hide, certainly not a blond giant crouching on the car floor’ frequency. The police officer does not care for the headlights that magically appear out of nowhere; clearly he has much bigger trouble. He drives on, unheeding; Bucky drives on, undeterred.

A few minutes of safe distance between them, Bucky turns off the headlights and exhales a long breath. Steve slowly slithers back onto his seat, grunting his way into a seated position.

“Police,” Bucky says.

“They see you?” Steve asks.

Bucky nods curtly.

“Not ideal,” Steve says unhelpfully.

“Not a disaster either,” Bucky says tautly. “Not yet.”

Steve nods. “It’ll be fine.”

Bucky clears his throat, uncertain. Out loud, he says, “Yeah.” He swallows hard and reaches out, sliding his fingers between Steve’s and squeezing. Steve cradles Bucky’s hand in his. “Yeah,” Bucky repeats. If he says it often enough, the powers that be might actually believe it. “You know,” he says, dismissing how forced his voice sounds, “that might actually have been Bob, from the police radio.”

Steve lets out a high-pitched considering hum. “It was Marty and Dave on patrol tonight.”

“Right,” Bucky consents, “but they must already be in Rosebud town, else what took them so long? Maybe that’s Bob, and he’s _their_ backup.”

“Right,” Steve plays along.

“Fucking Bob,” Bucky mumbles.

Steve sighs softly. “Fucking Bob.”

~

Extreme occasions call for normalcy in the most routinely regular manner. Technically, Bucky has nothing to hide. Technically, he was nowhere near Rosebud Mansion, so _technically_ he settles on being bold about it. After his morning coffee, he sets off downtown to get supplies that he doesn’t strictly need, to establish dominance and security on his person.

The hiccup on the plan, the thing Bucky does not show is that he does not feel the least bit of security in his person. Nothing is evidently amiss, not really, but something’s _off_. New faces of strangers he hasn’t seen before blend into the crowd, seamless amongst the town’s inhabitants, their presence unobtrusive to the layman’s eye; but Bucky _has_ been trained for this, and has unwittingly worried over it for years, searching for things slightly out of place where there are and should be none. Now, here, things _are_ just this shade of wrong, slightly tilted out of frame. He deliberates in his perusing of supplies, listening, scouting. For a fleeting second, he tries to pass it off as paranoia, but his instincts tell a different story. That story always ends with a plea to flee.

Laden with an assortment of food he blindly chucks into his cart and definitely does not need, but is essential in his deliberation of scoping out his whereabouts, Bucky walks to the truck and drives back to the property. He opens the car window and turns the music on on high volume, assuming an air of total nonchalance. He drives slowly, however, discreetly peeking for vehicles that perchance follow him. No vehicle does follow him, but what Bucky does think follows him is more disconcerting. Shadows seem to lurk around the forest as he drives the truck onto the property, dark patches in the already dark parts of trees. Bucky knows the area like the back of his hand, and the feeling of being watched doesn’t abate. Parking in the yard, he turns the music off, jumps out of the truck and makes a round of the wiry fence, pretending to inspect its state for housekeeping reasons while surreptitiously peering into the woods. He does not discern any definitive human shapes, but then again he wouldn’t; if someone were indeed watching him or the house, they wouldn’t be that good at their job if they were to get noticed. With a showy nod at himself at approving the wellbeing of the fence, he grabs his shopping and wades toward the house, hoping he’s unconsciously discovered the secret to telepathy and Steve hears his mandates to stay away from the front door.

He pushes the door open with his shoulder as quietly as possible, trying to not alert Steve to his presence. The effort goes amiss; Steve does have super-hearing after all, and he ambles down from upstairs with a grin on his face, ruffling his dripping wet hair onto his sweater. He is about to speak as he comes closer, but Bucky discreetly shakes his head.

“Hey, stay there,” he says under his breath, pushing the door closed with his foot, his eyes fixed to the floor, giving no indication that someone else is with him in the house. “Stay away from the windows.”

Steve stays still, his jaw tight, his shoulders set straight. Bucky walks to the kitchen and sets the bags down. He makes a show of checking the herbs, then walks back to the living room. Steve is cross-legged on the floor, his back against the couch, out of view even if by now that is belated. Bucky walks calmly to the windows and pulls the drapes closed. Steve gets back to his feet and sets his hands on his hips, eyes fixed on Bucky, who approaches, biting nervously at the inside of his cheek.

“Something’s off.”

Steve licks his lips. “What did you see?”

“New faces.” Bucky shakes his head, unsure how to support his case without proof, but certain that he has a point. “I think the house is being watched.”

Steve nods. “You think they know?”

Bucky shrugs. “Maybe someone suspects _me_ , but how could–”

“If I make a run for it right now, they can’t incriminate you,” Steve says evenly, clearly having thought of alternative options since last night’s escapade. “They can’t place you at the mansion–”

“Steve, it’s broad daylight,” Bucky says wearily, “and we’re possibly being watched. No one’s running.”

Steve shifts on his feet, semi-apologetic. “I have a plan for that.”

“Of course you do,” Bucky mumbles, scrubbing a hand over his face.

“If they spot me, there’ll be questions for you,” Steve says. “I have an alibi. You won’t like it, but–”

“Then don’t say it,” Bucky snaps half-heartedly. “Maybe we’ll have a better chance at night.”

“Of?”

“Of running,” Bucky clarifies, his face dark. He walks past Steve to the armoire, ascertaining that his gun is full of ammo.

“You’re not running,” Steve says over Bucky’s shoulder.

“Sure, pal,” Bucky says, mostly on autopilot. He doesn’t have a plan. He doesn’t have a clue what he should do, what he wants to do. He merely has a strong sense that he should be on the defensive, and a vague sense of loss that’s about to come.

A strong hand grips his arm; Steve turns Bucky around so that they face each other. His eyes are hard, the set of his mouth determined. “You’re not running.”

Bucky shakes him off. “We’ll see.”

“You’re–”

“I don’t know what I’ll do, alright?” Bucky snarls. “I _don’t_ know.”

Steve holds his gaze for a long moment. “It won’t do any good if we both get caught,” he says.

Bucky lets out a raspy laugh. “What, you think I’m no good at the Bonnie and Clyde thing?”

Steve rests his hand on Bucky’s shoulder, squeezing gently. “That’s not the way.” Bucky averts his eyes, but Steve isn’t having it. He tips his forehead against Bucky’s and sighs softly, his breath warm on Bucky’s skin. “It’s not the way.”

Bucky deflates, suddenly exhausted. He slowly pushes the gun inside his waistband. “Let’s just wait for nightfall, yeah?”

Steve nods. “Then I’ll tell you the plan.”

Bucky does not want to hear The Plan That He Won’t Like. Bucky only wants to hear Steve telling him stories, or making stupid banter. Bucky decisively does not want to run, to abandon the property, to hide or spend his life in prison, but he’s been resigned to that possibility for months now, going into that probable fate in full consciousness. Most of all, Bucky does not want to make the wrong choice, the choice that will make things worse. He doesn’t want Steve to run off alone; he doesn’t want to needlessly run along and categorically lose Steve, if both of them are to be caught.

He holds Steve’s wrist, tracing a line over his beating pulse. “Let’s wait for nightfall,” he repeats wearily.

Steve stays confined in windowless areas until Bucky can draw the drapes closed in inconspicuous intervals. It’s twilight already when they both retire to the kitchen, keeping an eye out on the news. The police radio is suspiciously silent, and that in itself is unnerving.

The air is heavy with the tenseness of a war about to break out. Bucky waits for the proverbial hammer to fall and maybe chop someone’s head off in the process – but whose head and how metaphorical Bucky is being, he’s not quite sure yet. He still has not come up with any plan of his own that guarantees any reasonable level of infallibility. He nervously tidies up the kitchen, sits back in his chair, gets back up again to dust or wipe this and that, get that cloth just so, tweak that glass a smidge to the right. Steve is the counterbalance to Bucky’s restlessness, stoic and quiet as he stares at the radio, willing it to come to life, not unlike the early days that he found himself on this property and tried incessantly to contact his friends.

Bucky peeks out of the curtain at the quickly falling darkness. He secures the curtain back in place, then wipes the counter for what feels – and is, really – the sixth time. “If I get the truck,” he says at length, “drive out, you think it’ll distract them? Divide them, so you can leave mostly undetected? Or if I go downtown–”

Steve stops him with a headshake. “That’s not the plan.”

Bucky opens his mouth, closes it again. He clears his throat, willing himself to ask about this plan, the plan that must be so idiotic that even Steve acknowledges Bucky won’t like it. Maybe there is a kernel of smartness in it; maybe Bucky can tweak it and make it into something good, or maybe both of them together can come to a sensible compromise. He is about to frame the question when the laptop chimes, the Skype sound making both Steve and Bucky jump.

Bucky walks around the table to check; Becca is calling. Steve’s burner phone, thus far a silent companion on the table, begins buzzing. Steve and Bucky exchange looks.

Steve picks up the phone with a cautious, “Hello?”

Bucky mutes the laptop and lets Becca’s call go ignored. He can always talk to her later. A shiver runs down his spine just at the thought, too close to a ‘famous last words’ quote for comfort.

“Hang on – hang – I’m putting you on speaker.”

“ _There’s a shoot-to-kill order, Steve, what are you doing?!”_ Tony Stark’s voice howls through the line.

“What’s happening?” Bucky asks.

“ _I’m on speaker?”_ Stark snaps. “ _Why the hell is your house on FBI watch, Barnes?!_ ”

Steve and Bucky glance at each other, confirming; knowing.

“ _Do you have any idea–_ ”

“How did they know?” Steve asks evenly.

“ _They don’t know! They think they know, they suspect – I don’t fucking know!_ ” Stark rants. “ _There was an incident somewhere near you last night, a mess with extraterrestrial technology. I won’t even ask if you were there, Cap, ‘cause you very clearly_ were.”

Steve shrugs at the phone.

“ _Bad guys talked about someone with, and I quote, superhuman powers and a guy with a gun. Someone saw Barnes out and about a couple hours later. It got them speculating._ ”

“So that’s all it is?” Steve asks. “Speculation?”

“ _You’re a high profile fugitive, Rogers, speculation is enough to get the feds going!_ ” Stark practically screams.

“Any suggestions?” Bucky pipes up, his palm clammy as he leans on the table.

“ _I don’t fucking know, invent human stealth mode maybe?!_ ”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Any helpful suggestions?”

“How determined are they?” Steve asks. “They about to come in?”

“ _I don’t know_ ,” Stark says. “ _I’m sending in our guys–_ ”

“You’re what?” Steve interjects. “On what pretext? Tony, don’t make this worse,” he says, glancing uneasily at Bucky.

“ _Oh really! Really,_ you _are gonna tell_ me _to not make it worse–”_

A ring sounds at the front door, curt but demanding. Bucky turns to the camera screen. A tall man stands before the door, clad in a long dark overcoat. He waits a couple seconds, checks a clock on his wrist, then rings again. He knocks on the door, three short raps, distant as they reach the kitchen. In the background, Stark still rants.

Bucky looks at Steve. “If I don’t, they might break in,” he says quietly.

Steve nods and swiftly takes the phone out of speaker. “Tony,” he whispers. “I’m gonna–”

Bucky does not hear what Steve ‘is gonna’. He walks to the front door, checks that the gun is still on him. He unlocks and opens the door just a fraction and peers out. The man looks up, his eyes round and piercing, his mouth hard even though he attempts a small smile.

“Yeah?” Bucky says gruffly.

“Good evening, hello,” the man says, pushing the door open with his palm in an attempt to casually enter the house. Bucky pushes against it, blatantly resisting as he would do on any occasion, harboring or not harboring Steve. “Oh!” the man says, seemingly surprised. “I’m from the law company. For the litigation,” he adds at Bucky’s unimpressed stare. “We spoke on the phone.”

“We didn’t,” Bucky ascertains. He tries to glance beyond the man for backup, but he cannot do so inconspicuously, not with the man standing so close.

“I must’ve spoken to the house owner then, he did say something about a housekeeper,” the man says.

“Sorry, man,” Bucky says, pushing the door a little closer to a close. “Can’t help you.”

The man pushes back. “I was specifically told I was to inspect the house for evidence against our client–”

Bucky snorts. That overcoat is hiding weapons. There is backup waiting, even if Bucky can’t actually see them. It doesn’t matter if Bucky politely, or even aggressively, declines entrance to the man. Things are already down the drain. The one thing Bucky can’t determine is how bad it is. A small team, maybe Steve and he can handle with a reasonable head start. A full-blown small army though, shooters and snipers, that would complicate things to hell.

“’S not as though it’s a matter of national security, right?” Bucky drawls.

Apparently it’s the wrong thing to say. It sets the man off, alerting him to the fact that Bucky knows things he shouldn’t, or the man merely loses his patience altogether. He smashes his body against the door, flinging it open. He pulls out a gun and clutches at it with both hands, muzzle pointed at Bucky as the man furtively looks over the living room, a predator looking for his victim.

‘His victim’ bursts in out of the kitchen. Momentarily distracted, the man turns his gun at Steve and fires, but Bucky’s on it. He slams against the man before he takes proper aim, the bullet missing Steve, lodging inside the wall. The man pulls out a second gun that Steve takes care of. Their hand-to-hand kerfuffle is quick, the man down in three strikes. Bucky tosses the man’s gun at Steve, who catches it midair as four more people surge into the house, clad in tactical gear, brandishing guns and what look to be tasers. The first victim of that taser-like device is the couch, which shelters Bucky when the electricity is aimed against him. The cushions sizzle, a small whiff of smoke wisping up, and Bucky might quite possibly be the worst house-sitter in eternity. Still, he only hesitates for a split second before slamming an end table on his opponent’s face. He staggers, which is all the leeway Bucky needs to trip him and incapacitate him. Bucky scrambles back and checks on Steve, who has two people down and struggles with a third one. The principle of one-attacker-at-a-time applying only in fiction if convenient, Bucky engages. Steve decks his gun against his enemy’s head, sending him down with a bleeding gash.

“Back porch,” he pants at Bucky.

“Go north,” Bucky rasps. “The abbey.”

Steve nods. He rushes to the back porch and flings the door open, slamming against chairs as he crosses the yard. Bucky is at his heels, hair flying behind him, nostrils filled with the scent of dewy grass. The sound of their harried footsteps reverberates deep in his ears. The metal of his gun is heavy and reassuring on his palm. Steve reaches the fence and propels himself through it, ripping it in half. Bucky marvels at the hole he leaves behind, a bitch to fix, but nonetheless impressive. He follows carelessly, shoving aside the chain links with his metal hand, clothes getting caught on their edges. Voices sound; movement rustles the trees. Steve glances back to ascertain that Bucky’s with him and eggs him on with a breathless “Come on,” as though Bucky would entertain the thought of stopping.

Shots ring out, piercing and close. Bucky doubles his speed and curses, knowing well that Steve could outrun him and be gone by now. He means to say as much, tries to catch up with Steve to do so, but now people swarm behind them, with more guns than Bucky is comfortable counting. Steve complicates their route, twisting and turning through thick trees and heavy shadows, though the sounds of their running are a sure telltale of their whereabouts.

Steve heads for the ruins of the abbey, as instructed. The stone walls will provide cover, will delay their pursuers and possibly allow Steve and Bucky to fire off shots, but this doesn’t offer any actual solution. After the ruins, the options are limited. Run until they’re caught, fight to the death, or maybe somehow miraculously escape. Though ideal, the latter seems unlikely. They can’t run forever – or maybe Steve can, and Bucky once again slows him down.

They impossibly make it to the abbey. Steve cuts through the trees like he’s a human bullet, entire branches breaking off with his velocity and raw strength. He lunges behind a weather-beaten stone wall, pressing himself against it.

Bucky catches up, crashing against the stone. Hands on his knees, he gulps down air in pants, desperate to regulate his breathing lest he hyperventilates so hard that he passes out. “Go,” he wheezes, lungs aching. “You can run faster, make it out–”

“I’m not leaving you, don’t be an idiot,” Steve says resolutely, glancing behind him as loud voices approach. He cocks his gun.

Bucky shakes his head. “Steve–” He stops short, eyes going wide. Two boys – two _teenagers_ huddle together a few feet beside them, low enough and hidden in the shadows to initially pass undetected. Cigarettes hang limply from their trembling hands, their faces pale. “Steve,” Bucky whispers.

Steve turns sharply to him, then spins to Bucky’s eyeline. He straightens at once, expression slipping for a second. In that one second, he is genuinely frightened.

Guns fire. The teenagers flinch and duck their heads as bullets seem to ricochet off the other side of the stone wall, probably warning shots or maybe mere distractions, diversions from people who might be closing in on them from other sides.

Steve curses under his breath and flings himself out from the protection of the wall, arms raised as lights shine on him, his skin deathly pearlescent. “Don’t shoot!” he calls. “There’s _children_ here!”

Something passes fleetingly over the boys’ eyes. On any other occasion, they’d revolt at being called children. Now they embrace it, in hopes that it keeps them alive.

Guns shoot again, more fervently this time, their target exposed and unmoving. Steve fires back and dives behind the wall, grunting. He glances at the teenagers, then back at Bucky.

“Other side,” he says. “Lead them away.”

Bucky nods. Together they take off, running in twists and turns far from the teenagers. Their pursuers are now hot on their heels, so close that Bucky half-thinks this is how he goes. Steve jerks his head up to the sky and huffs. Bucky follows his gaze and startles. Avengers that he recognizes as War Machine and Vision swoop down the sky – to help or arrest Bucky cannot be sure. They’re still under Accords provisions, and who is on whose side at this point is debatable and very, very gray.

The shooting starts again as Steve and Bucky cross the abbey’s graveyard. The morbid irony of the situation doesn’t go unnoticed. Cold light from helicopters shines down on them, illuminating their path around the broken and protruding slabs of stone, two brilliantly lit targets for all ambitious shooters. This _cannot_ end well, but Bucky can’t stop running, can’t stop trying, cannot stop fighting.

Steve glances at Bucky and nudges him forward, dragging his elbow to push him past himself. Bucky half-trips over his own legs as he turns to look over his shoulder, but Steve pushes his back, shouting at him words probably along the lines of ‘Move,’ but Bucky’s mind cannot register them properly. He raises his gun, but Steve abruptly steals it off of him, firing at their pursuers as he gives Bucky a shove ahead. People are on them now, around them. Steve fires off again, shooting ammo that he’ll soon run out of.

“Go!” Bucky screams.

Steve shoves Bucky’s back again, forcefully pushing him forward. A blinding spotlight from above falls on them, shines into Bucky’s eyes and distorts his vision. He jerks his head down, only seeing black and white spots. He scrubs his eyes, blinks furiously, but everything is blurry. Someone smashes against him and disorients him. Bucky sidesteps violently in full speed, foot catching on hard stone, knee slamming hard against what must be a grave. Losing balance, he slips, arms fumbling in the air for something to hold onto. He hits the ground, jagged rocks jabbing into his side. His head collides with a gravestone; his brain vibrates at the impact, a terrifying jolt. Stars flash before his eyes. His stomach turns as a metallic taste fills his mouth. He might throw up, but _this is not the time_ – _this isn’t the time_ –

_This_ –

_This_ …

_Fucking Bob._

The world turns black.

~

Softness engulfs him. Silkiness cools his warm skin. This could be heaven, floating on fluffy clouds. The thought crosses Bucky’s mind for the span of five seconds before the throbbing in his head and the painful dryness of his throat inform him that this isn’t heaven at all, but someone’s bed; definitely not his _own_ bed, judging from the refined sheets. He tries to brush his fingers against the fabric, but his muscles protest, sore, aching and intensely unhappy. His eyelids weigh down like dumbbells. Bucky is genuinely worried that he cannot lift them up until he does so, relief escaping his lungs with a puffy exhale that’s closer to a sigh. He blinks, too disoriented to be truly worried over his unlikely circumstance. His blanket is white, the floor is white, the whole damn room is white and an IV drips fluids in his arm. He almost makes a feeble attempt to chuck the thing off, before he spots a figure staring out the window, his hands deep in the pockets of his slacks. Bucky narrows his eyes to focus his vision. The figure turns and notices that he’s awake. His brown eyes widen and he visibly perks up as he trots closer–

As _Tony Stark_ trots closer, his red tie and glasses making him the obligatory centerpiece of the room by merit of color.

“Good, you’re up.” Stark drops heavily on the side of Bucky’s bed, the mattress dipping under his weight.

Bucky swallows down thickly, grimacing at the taste in his mouth. “What’s happening?”

“I’ve been told you experienced a spectacularly dramatic fall, hit your noggin pretty hard; you’re well, you’re healing, you’ll be fine,” Stark relays, his words tumbling out too fast for Bucky’s fuzzy consciousness. “You might see bruises on your leg though, someone kinda trampled over you in the tussle.”

Bucky opens his mouth to ask, but Stark beats him to it.

“Steve has been captured,” he says bluntly, his casualness belied by the thinness of his voice. “There was no other way, had no escape. He told them he held you hostage, to protect you.”

“He _what_ –” Bucky pushes himself up on his palms, head spinning. He wills himself to get a grip. Where there’s a will, there’s surely a way, and he _has_ to get up–

Bucky sways a little; he sways a lot.

Stark sets his palm on Bucky’s chest and lightly pushes him down. “Calm thy tits, lover boy. He said this was a plan, someone’s plan, _his_ plan maybe?”

“Fuck’s fucking plan–” Bucky runs his hand over his eyes, heart sinking, stomach churning. “We have to _do_ something!”

“Calm thy tits,” Stark repeats levelly, “and listen.”

~ ~ ~

_“The room’s secure. No one can hear us.”_ _A beat; a shuffle. “I checked. Multiple times.” A beat; a cough._

_It’s not like Tony Stark to deliberate, to pause and collect his thoughts, but this is unfamiliar territory. Neither of them ever thought they’d be in this position, not really. Not in a high security_ facility _– just a fancy word for ‘prison’, more savvy than a regular prison, less inhumane than the atrocity of the Raft; not with Steve in heavy handcuffs designed for super-powered people like him. It’s not how either of them envisioned their first meeting after their so-called ‘Civil War.’_

_Steve leans back in his chair, dragging the heavy cuffs across the table. The flimsy clothes he’s been regulated, bland and loose even on him, make him feel defenseless, naked.  The unforgiving white lights make his eyes sting. The emptiness of the room gives him a headache._

_“They been treating you well?”_

_Steve lifts his eyes, disbelief passing over his face._

_“I –” Tony props his elbows on the table and covers his face with his palms. “I swear to God, Cap, I’ve got a million things to say to you and most of it is profanities.”_

_“Let’s save it for the extended version and get to the point,” Steve says mildly._

_Tony parts two fingers, peeking out at Steve with a dumbfounded expression. “Seriously?” He lets out a long sigh, sitting up straighter; regrouping. “Okay. All right. We can waste time hearing out your half of the story, but we don’t have to. It’ll save time if you trust your boy enough to think he did it justice.”_

_Steve’s lips twitch into a smile he doesn’t quite allow. He cannot help the softness that passes over his face, however. “I trust him.”_

_“Didn’t make it easy, I’ll tell you_ that _,” Tony says ruefully. “Had to coax it out of him. I think he didn’t want to rat you out, or didn’t trust we had your best interest at heart even though_ we _saved his sorry ass from jail or something. Always picking up after your strays.”_

_Steve raises his eyebrows._

_“Okay, this one stray,” Tony babbles on. “Until Natasha came along and they–” he shrugs, fumbling dramatically for words – “I don’t know, they hashed it out, they talked about dismembering each other and disemboweling each other and then got down to business. We were really nice to him up to that point. Boy has some weird sides maybe, you should look into it. So then he spilled the beans, so if you trust him–”_

_“I trust him,” Steve repeats. “Is he all right?”_

_“Fidgety,” Tony says. “But fine.”_

_“And the others?” Steve asks._

_“Fine. It’s you that’s the issue at this point, so. Stay put,” Tony says. “Do not fight this, do not try to escape.”_

_History repeats itself; Steve heard the same advice or instructions months ago, courtesy of Natasha. He does not particularly feel like fighting. He always knew that this was a highly possible outcome for him, but he does not intend to stay imprisoned forever either. He_ will _break out eventually, somehow. The specifics of it don’t particularly concern him at the moment._

_“I have a plan,” Tony goes on._

_“Do you,” Steve says idly._

_“An actual plan,” Tony insists. “Not just discussions and compromises and pleas. An actual plan that might possibly not turn the whole world against us – maybe only half of it. 62% at best.”_

_Steve rolls his eyes, but he smiles._

_“I’ll show them,” Tony says. “I’ll show those 117 Accords teams what the world would be if the Avengers were out of commission, if the Avengers had been out of commission, regulated by oversight and waiting for permission, ten years ago. Spoiler alert? The world would have been no more,” he finishes dramatically._

_Steve raises his eyebrows, staring skeptically at the table, tracing patterns on the cold surface. “That’s quite the rage against the documents that_ you _supported.”_

_Tony stares at him for a long moment, mouth agape. “I thought – aren’t we through this? Haven’t we been through this?”_

_Steve huffs out, amused. “Natasha and I have been through this, Rhodey and I had a good chat–”_

_“All right, I’m_ sorry _,” Tony says, palms out and eyes burning with emotion. “I was wrong. I was rushed and I was scared, scared we were destroying the very Earth that we were trying to protect. I should’ve listened, and_ you _should have listened–” he ignores Steve’s sound of protest – “and then maybe we’d have something good, a better agreement. But that’s all past, and now we’re here, and we have to make the best of it, and for my part I’m sorry. Is this what you want to hear?” he snaps._

_“As a matter of fact, yes,” Steve says with a smirk. “How are you_ showing _them? What’s your grand plan?”_

_Tony shrugs. “Simulation. Chuck them in a hall amidst apocalypse scenarios sans the Avengers. Aliens coming at them, the world on fire, buildings turning sentient.”_

_Steve frowns. “Buildings–”_

_“Assume responsibility, but remind them,_ stress _to them that if it isn’t us,” Tony says, “it’s gonna be someone else. If_ we _aren’t the indirect cause of greater threats, someone else will be, and maybe_ they _won’t feel inclined to also be defenders.” He falls back in his chair, runs a hand through his hair. “And then we’ll break the Accords, back out of them, it’s been decided. And let the chips fall where they may.”_

_Steve nods._

_“And in light of that, I’m gonna request private trials for the fugitives and for you,” Tony says. “I’ve got lawyers working on it 24/7. We don’t want to turn you into angelic martyr figures. We just want to prove that you don’t belong in a prison.”_

_Steve lets out a mirthless chuckle. “I just confessed to keeping a man hostage.”_

_Tony waves a dismissive hand. “We’ll work it out.”_

_Steve sits up straighter. “Tony,” he starts somberly._

_“We’ve got this,” Tony interjects. “We won’t throw your boy under the bus, I promise.”_

_Steve nods. “Thank you,” he says, heartfelt and sincere._

_“Yeah, yeah,” Tony mumbles. “Whatever.”_

~

Steve stands in front of the narrow mirror, carefully trimming his beard. His eyes are maybe a little duller, his skin pallid and more hollow than he’s come to know, but he’s been kept in holding for many long months, has been stewing in his own juice for too much time for his idleness and moroseness to not have physical effects.

It doesn’t really matter. It’s time he goes free. For many long months he’s waited for Tony’s visits – the only person he’s allowed to see, alongside the head lawyer of his case – for updates, but mostly for the easy chit chat, for having someone around that he can call a friend. For many long months he’s had to hold himself back from being _difficult_ , from ignoring the lapses in security which could guarantee him a way out. For too many long months he’s been a model prisoner, proverbially gnawing at his own skin to keep himself from gnawing at other people.

He’s gone to trial – he’s gone to _numerous_ trials – small and subdued affairs where people defamed him, waxed eloquent about him. He’s done it all, the way Tony asked, and now he’s free to go, with the Avengers officially pulled out of the Accords. Rumor has it Clint and Scott held a bonfire night, burning copies of the damn thing and dancing around the fire, chanting. Half of the world still supports them. Tony’s simulation scheme was at least partially successfully, just the way he had intended. The rest, it seemed, would be figured out one step at a time.

Steve wets his hair and combs it, deems the parting too vintage and teases the ends, trying to reclaim some sense of self through grooming. He pats down his clothes, jeans, t-shirt and a jacket that Tony found in the Avengers Compound, items Steve hasn’t worn since he ran for his life and never looked back.

His heart flutters in his chest, unruly no matter how hard Steve tries to chastise it, the prospect of his freedom too thrilling for a human ribcage to contain, even if it is enhanced. He doesn’t exactly have plans – his life, too, is a one-step-at-a-time affair these days – but he can now see the people that he calls his own out in the open, no repercussions, and that’s enough. It’s been a long while since he’s known anything substantial about them, Tony being more preoccupied with the trials, that Steve shivers with anticipation at the thought of seeing Natasha, banter with Sam, hug Wanda–

See Bucky.

Maybe.

It’s been a long time. It’s been too long. It’s been too long to ask for loyalty, to ask for patience, too long of an absence and too harsh conditions to ask a man to wait.

Steve would understand, he really would. He just wouldn’t enjoy it.

He’d hate it. The thought of seeing Bucky again has been a bright spot in his dark days, the echo of his voice in Steve’s head lulling him to sleep on sleepless nights. His spine tingles at the prospect of reunion. His lips quirk up into an unwitting, uncontainable smile–

But still. It’s a long time to ask a man to wait. Steve understands. Even if his own heart is unchanged, even if the flames of affection still burn bright and ferocious for the magnetic stranger that stole his heart and ran with it one fine night, thoroughly uninclined to give it back – with Steve thoroughly uninclined to demand it – he’d understand. He really would.

It would just a hurt a lot is all.

Steve stuffs into his backpack the few possessions he’s been allowed to keep – a couple of books, some crafts from leisure time at the facility after showcasing tame behavior; after therapists deemed it would be unhealthy for him to be in solitary confinement indeterminably, just watching the same four walls, ceiling and floor. The backpack slumps into itself, half-empty, and Steve sighs.

A guard comes to collect him, a scrawny youngster that Steve hasn’t seen before, probably a novice sent out in the safe knowledge that Steve is officially not a viable threat. The youngster is bright-eyed, friendly. He steals glances at Steve, ineffectually concealing his awe as he walks him to the bureau, for Steve to sign papers upon papers for his release. Steve skims the documents to make sure he isn’t signing away his soul, then steps into the corridor alone, traversing the long path to the front entrance.

He shows his release papers. He gets approved. He’s free to go.

Backpack slouched on his shoulder, Steve crosses the empty yard, crosses the front gate; steps out; breathes in.

The sun is bright, warm on his skin. The world is vast, ready for him.

The world is vast, but his vicinity is thoroughly devoid of people.

He doesn’t exactly expect any particular fanfare, but it sure would have been nice if someone had bothered to maybe send a car, a cab, hell, had even sent a phone so that Steve could call for a cab himself. Going back to the facility to call someone isn’t an option. Steve does not plan on getting back in there any time soon. He readjusts his backpack and sets off, feet steady and strong on the gravel. He’ll walk, for as long as it takes. Probably a couple hours if what he spots in the distance is an actual town. A couple hours isn’t too bad. Maybe he doesn’t even need to be picked up after all.

He crosses the thick white front walls of the facility, turns down the street–

And stops.

A red car gleams under the sunlight, flamboyance personified in an otherwise deserted site. Against it leans Bucky, arms and ankles crossed, eyes kind and bright. Steve’s heart leaps into his throat. Sparks runs through his veins, tingling and freezing, exhilaration rendering him speechless. Bucky – _his_ Bucky, his grouchy best boy that burns more radiantly than he can ever know, his nurturing nature and innate softness mingling with pragmatism and what he views as cynicism, the Bucky that never accepts being refused, that quietly never backs down – _that_ Bucky stands before the car like Steve’s personal icon, tall and resplendent. His long hair falls downs his shoulders, gleaming under the sun. He sports scruff, a choice Steve has never seen him adopt before, always having been rather clean-shaven during their months together. The darkness of it brings out his lips, pink and inviting; Steve wants to kiss him.

  


“Hey, pal,” Bucky greets lightly, a small smile playing on his mouth as his husky voice sends shivers down Steve’s spine and makes his head spin. “Want a ride?”

Steve sniffs, uttering a sound between an elated chuckle and an awkward whimper. He rushes forward, engulfing Bucky in a vice-hard hug that makes Bucky laugh a little. Steve buries his face in Bucky’s shoulder, inhaling his familiar scent, blinking as hairs get caught onto his eyelashes. He lets out a shuddering breath, loud and aching.

“Hey,” Bucky says next to Steve’s ear, his fingers twisted into Steve’s jacket. He takes a deep breath and pulls back, just enough to look into Steve’s eyes, his hands now gripping Steve’s shoulder and wrist.

Steve’s eyes might be a little red, but he won’t cry. He doesn’t need to cry. Months of pent-up emotion surge out of him as he finally feels safe in safe hands, comfortable in a comforting space. He won’t cry. He–

“Let’s not cry all over Stark’s car, yeah?” Bucky says with a lopsided smile, pinching Steve’s cheek.

Steve lets out a wet laugh.

“I gotta return that thing,” Bucky says.

“Something’s growing on your face,” Steve says thickly, going for levity and achieving sheer mushiness.

Bucky clicks his tongue, a mannerism that Steve just now realizes how sorely he’s been missing. He draws closer and sets a soft kiss on Bucky’s lips, chaste and testing, polite and questioning, there and gone in a second as he gazes searchingly into Bucky’s eyes. Bucky raises his eyebrows then clicks his tongue again, impatient and eager. He curls his hand around Steve’s neck and pulls him close, locking his lips into a kiss of longing, its heat and fondness making Steve limp and euphoric.

Bucky finishes off the kiss with an enticing nibble and a throaty laugh. He flashes a cheeky grin, nose crinkling, a twinkle playing in his eyes. He raises his palm, fingers splayed open in an invitation. “Wanna ride off into the sunset?”

Steve beams, the mirroring grin that splits his face as natural as breathing, as life-giving as the beating of his heart. He slips his fingers between Bucky’s own, entwining their hands into a fitting grip.

“Lead the way, Buck.”


End file.
